


worn out places, worn out faces

by 779H41, crinklefries, fannishlove, WitchyLurker



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Western, Bearded Steve Rogers, Eventual Smut, Fake Marriage, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Gun-for-Hire Steve Rogers, Lovers on the Run, M/M, Minor Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Resistance Fighter Bucky Barnes, Slow Burn, alternate title: dicks out in the apocalypse, but it's ok because Steve Rogers wears a duster the entire time, fake lovers on the run, fuck fascism!, many guns were used in the writing of this fic, mentions of torture, sexytimes happens, that's the new genre, there's a lot of violence, this is a western dystopian fake lovers on the run action movie AU, with heavy sociopolitical commentary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-10-31 00:03:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 84,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17838551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/779H41/pseuds/779H41, https://archiveofourown.org/users/crinklefries/pseuds/crinklefries, https://archiveofourown.org/users/fannishlove/pseuds/fannishlove, https://archiveofourown.org/users/WitchyLurker/pseuds/WitchyLurker
Summary: He comes in like the others, with tired feet and a dusty leather jacket, cracked from old age, weather-worn hair he pulls back off his face, and a name he needs to outrun.He looks like a man who wants to be forgotten, except for bright blue eyes that he can’t quite hide and a little cleft in his chin that becomes more pronounced when he smiles.He hasn’t smiled for a long time, though.The man sits at the bar and waits.He doesn’t know who he’s waiting for, but he does know what.Someone to smuggle him to the Citadel, the heart of HYDRA, so he can help cut off its head and blow up the rest.





	1. liberty city, western district.

**Author's Note:**

> I have to thank an absolute BOATLOAD of people for the encouragement and creation of this fic. 
> 
> \+ First, to [calendulae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/calendulae/pseuds/amsch), a gem of a human, who did most of the following: beta work, hand-holding, listening to me shriek my frustrations into the void, direct cheerleading, telling me I need to write, and, most importantly, helping on a three day saga to pick a title, which ended up being the one I picked in November anyway. THANKS, FRIEND, PSYCHED TO HAVE YOUR FRIENDSHIP AFTER ALL THAT. Check out HER AU BB [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17736008) bc she's STELLAR.
> 
> \+ Thank you also to [odetteandodile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/odetteandodile/pseuds/odetteandodile) and the rest of Twitter for listening to me whine about this fic absolutely ENDLESSLY and INSUFFERABLY.
> 
> \+ THE MODS of the AU BB -- I know there was a lot of grumbling floating around, but this Bang (and fic) would not have gotten done without you, so THANK YOU, I have an appreciation.
> 
> \+ And finally, my three AMAZING artists! [fannishlove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fannishlove), [779H41](https://archiveofourown.org/users/779H41/profile), and [witchylurker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchylurker), I am in awe of your artistic skills and could not have asked for a better group of artists to have worked with! Thrilled and honored to have had you on this team, your love and support for this fic means SO MUCH to me. Thank you! You guys gotta love all over their artwork! ♥
> 
> *
> 
> And to my READERS--I hope you're ready for a wild ride! This will be 11 chapters total, with the final posting (and two chapters) being posted on February 26th. I hope you enjoy this Western Dystopian Fake Lovers on the Run, or, as [Lizzy](https://twitter.com/attackofthezee) has dubbed it: "Dicks Out in the Apocalypse." 

  
_banner: worn out places, worn out faces; by fannishlove_

*

_all around me are familiar faces_  
_worn out places, worn out faces_  
_bright and early for their daily races_  
_going nowhere, going nowhere_

*

**liberty city, western district.**

There’s a city at the end of the known world that houses weary travelers. It isn’t a big city. In fact it’s not a city at all, just a town in the middle of nowhere, the first and the last of its kind for miles. It’s the ramshackle kind of traveler’s haven that people crave during times like these, when there’s nothing but straight dirt roads one way and brown ocean waters the other, and in the middle is a kind of transient civilization held together by a few taverns and a few inns and a brothel that no one bothers to hide. 

Anonymity is currency in this town, stories from people without names and news from wherever the dirt roads lead that is just tangible enough to be terrifying and distant enough to not matter. Liberty City, at the end of the Western District of what used to be the United States and is now just a state of disarray if it’s anything at all, is the final stop for those hoping to run away and a place of hazy memory for those who have already run. People don’t stay long here and those who do forget whatever it was they came from. 

It’s a city of nothing, held together by belief and the exhaustion of dirt-caked feet and guns that have run out of bullets. She’s named for a concept no one much remembers anymore and values even less. She’s just a dream of what could have been, the lady Liberty.

He comes in like the others, with tired feet and a dusty leather jacket, cracked from old age, weather worn hair he pulls back out of his face, and a name he needs to forget. 

His hair is long, his face tired, his clothing old and nondescript. He has scruff that looks like it doesn’t belong there and wears gloves the color of dirt. His boots are caked in clay, which isn’t unusual, because everything around here is clay, red and muddy until it reaches the brown shores of what used to be potable, fresh water. 

He looks like a man who wants to be forgotten, except for bright blue eyes that he can’t quite hide and a little cleft in his chin that becomes more pronounced when he smiles.

He hasn’t smiled for a long time, though.

He gives a coin to a young boy who directs him to the best tavern around--not difficult given there’s a whole three of them total--and he trudges halfway across the good lady Liberty to the biggest building around by far, wooden, with big windows and a set of swinging, dark double doors that keep opening and shutting. He sees the lettering across the side, big and bold and probably white at some point, but turned black with time and dirt.

**THE GUARDIAN**

It seems optimistic for a watering hole, but he supposes even the end of the world has earned some ironic humor.

He wipes his hands on his jeans and steps up the planks onto the porch. He passes in between the two pillars out front, pushes through the dark doors, avoids a large man with a curly, red beard, and makes his way inside.

No one looks at him at a place like this. Liberty City is for passing, not for looking. Everyone has a secret, a past they’re trying to forget. He scans the room quickly, discreetly, making sure there aren’t any glaring red flags and when he finds none, he crosses the dark, stained floor to the bar.

The bar is beautiful and old, a stretch of dark wood in front of glass rows and shelves of bottles of dark and light liquids. It’s a saving grace for anyone so inclined to forget.

He’s not inclined to forget, but he’s tired and is inclined to take the edge off.

He takes a seat at one of the stools, the wood nearly split down the middle, and drums his fingertips on the counter, waiting to be noticed.

It doesn’t take long. Attention is always saved for those willing to spend money and a traveler at a bar is always willing to spend money. 

“What can I get you for?” a bald man with grey skin and red markings crawling up the back of his neck asks.

“Whiskey,” he says. “On the rocks.”

The grey man laughs.

“Haven’t had rocks in weeks, but I appreciate the wishful thinking,” he says. “Can do the whiskey though.”

“Guess I’m getting a whiskey then,” he says.

The grey man nods and leaves to get a bottle of his finest or, well, a bottle.

The man sits at the bar and waits.

He doesn’t know who he’s waiting for, but he does know what.

Someone to smuggle him to the Citadel, the heart of HYDRA, so he can help cut off its head and blow up the rest.

*

When Bucky was seventeen, HYDRA took his family. Specifically, State soldiers came to their house, knocked down the doors, killed his mother and hung his father. They tried to take his sister too and shoot him in the head, but Bucky escaped and smuggled her out, used the emergency plan his parents had devised a long time ago to burrow through the tunnels under their storm shelter and run from their town.

He had gotten Becca out of there and left her with one of their dad’s friends. Then he had gone back for HYDRA.

It had started small, setting HYDRA facilities and banks on fire. He had broken into HYDRA storage lockers and vandalized them, slipped past security at HYDRA checkpoints and dismantled their entire system. He had started small and grown bigger, larger, louder, until he was working with a small group of other like-minded, disenfranchised, angry young men. They called themselves the Howlies and they made life a living hell for any State soldier they could find. Bucky was their leader. They called him Sergeant, mocking HYDRA, and followed him into the jaws of hell. 

He only stopped setting things on fire when he realized it wasn’t enough.

That’s when he started blowing shit up. 

 

The Howlies got their demolition from the underground weapons market, a black market of every unsavory character and banned or prohibited item that HYDRA had purged during its rise to power. Bucky was their leader, with a mind for blueprints and buildings, natural charisma, and a bottomless well of anger he never could let go. 

They started at smaller HYDRA bases, locking out soldiers, hacking into their systems, wiping their footprints, and, when all else failed, blocking it to shit and back. Bucky liked doing that. He liked blowing up HYDRA strongholds and he was good at it to boot.

He and the Howlies had marked success. Took down a dozen or more HYDRA strongholds before they got caught.

It was Bucky’s biggest job that did them in, in the end; a stronghold in the middle of the Eastern District, too close to the Citadel itself. HYDRA had been using it as ammunition storage and training facility for more mindless State soldiers. Bucky never felt bad about blowing up State soldiers. Anyone who turned HYDRA had given up their humanity long ago. 

It should have run like any of their other missions, ambitious, but smooth.

What went wrong, Bucky couldn’t say. 

Maybe he forgot to dot his i’s and cross his t’s. Maybe luck wasn’t on his side that day. Maybe the wind blew in the wrong direction and the tectonic plates shifted too early and every single fucking alarm went off just before Dernier set off the first explosive. 

He got caught that day; Dernier blown to rubble and Bucky knocked out cold by HYDRA soldiers. Later he learned that Morita and Jones had gotten away, so he was only partially upset when HYDRA began torturing him.

They did, though. 

They’re good at that, HYDRA. 

 

They tortured the everliving, fucking shit out of him, took his fucking arm, and tried to fucking brainwash him, but he spit in their faces and said _fuck you_ , biting when they tried to touch him and screaming when they wanted quiet. He made their lives a hell and they made him believe he was in hell. It was on the brink of collapse, on the verge of sneaking in a gun to blow his own fucking brains out, when--

They came for him.

*

He doesn’t know what this person looks like, his coyote. He was given a slip of paper and all it said was _the town at the end of the world, friday, november 9_. He had memorized the words and set the paper on fire, watched its white edges curl red and then black under the flame.

He doesn’t know if it’s November 9th, but he came to the edge of his known world and that’s going to have to be good enough for the Eyes. 

He drinks his whiskey and waits.

*

The Eyes got him out of HYDRA’s cells, his body one week away from becoming a human genetic experiment for some sadistic fuck named Arnim Zola. He had lost his arm in the process, rot spreading so fast they had sawed it off before they had attempted to save it.

Bucky can barely remember that night.

Anesthesia was a luxury of the old world.

The new one just gave him a rag to suck on. In reality it was to muffle his screams as the saw cut through his muscle.

The Eyes had found him shortly after, not delirious yet, but approaching. 

It had been a woman with red hair and green eyes, dressed like a State soldier. Bucky had thought she had come to kill him. He would have even welcomed it at that point.

Instead, she had cut his bonds and helped him up.

“My name is Natasha Romanoff,” the woman had said in a gravelly voice. “I’m an Eye. I’m here to get you out of here.”

 

The Eyes, Natasha had explained to him later, after she had smuggled him out, were a group of rebels working to subvert the HYDRA State. Called the Eye of Fury, or the Eyes for short, the group had been responsible for a lot of fallen HYDRA bases and discreet subversion that was still coming to fruition.

“We saw your work,” Natasha had said. “You’re a crazy motherfucker. No survival instincts to speak of. But I’m impressed.”

Natasha had taken him to the first of many safe houses.

Bucky had taken nearly a month to recover from his wounds, another month to recover from the torture, and when he was nearly out of his mind with recovery, one of the Eyes, a borderline insufferable genius named Tony Stark, had made him a metal arm.

The arm had shifting plates, ridges, and heat sensitivity. It was all unbreakable alloys and raw strength. Bucky had taken another two months to learn to use it, to control his new unbridled physical power. With his new arm he could accidentally crush anything he gripped with more force than he would use on a kitten. The power was thrilling, but his reality was not.

Torture and brainwashing are a bitch to get rid of.

*

Time seems to ebb and flow as he sits there, finishes his whiskey, and orders another one. Men and women come and go, some old, some young, all battle worn from open roads and struggling to survive. Bucky moves to a seat along the side of the bar, cups his glass in between his hands and watches the door. A gruff old man with one eye limps in, a cloak about his shoulders, white hair down to the top of his back. He takes a booth, seemingly waiting for someone, and Bucky watches as a woman with long black hair and green eyes and a tall, broad blond approach him after minutes. The old man seems to hold court among them and Bucky shifts his focus elsewhere.

There’s a child and his mother sharing a hunk of hard bread and some cheese at a table. The child looks hungry, the mother tired and gaunt, like life has eaten her right away. Behind them is a dark haired man sleeping at his table. He has the features of someone come from far, far away. Asian, Bucky supposes he would have been called once.

“Another?” the grey bartender, named Drax, asks.

“Could use a bite,” Bucky admits. 

He doesn’t remember the last time he ate or what city he might have eaten in, before he got to land’s end.

“Offer me your coin and I’ll tell you what I have,” Drax says. He wipes down a glass that only seems to get filthier after every swipe.

Bucky reaches into his pocket and pulls out three bronze coins and shoves it across the counter.

“Stew and bread good?” Drax nods, taking the money.

“Sure,” Bucky shrugs. “Got nothing to compare it to.”

“Got hunger to compare it to,” Drax replies.

“You got me there,” Bucky says and swallows down the rest of the whiskey.

Drax leaves to put in the order and Bucky gets up to go piss. He stretches on the way, subtly checking to make sure he can still feel it all on him—the two knives hidden in his socks, the gun hidden at his waist. He feels the press of warm metal and breathes a sigh of relief. 

He bumps into a man in a cloak with a hood pulled up.

“Sorry,” he mutters.

The man grunts and Bucky shrugs, moving past him to the bathrooms. He checks his weapons again, just to make sure, splashes water across his face, and takes care of business.

*

Eventually they get it out of his head, whatever HYDRA put in there, due to another genius, this one less annoying, named Shuri. Shuri is a vibrant, funny piece of shit. She reminds Bucky so much of Becca that he avoids her for weeks. When she finally corners him, he grits his teeth and deals with the open wound of his heart. He doesn’t know where Becca is anymore and may never know again. That’s the price he pays, to do what he needs to do.

Shuri takes the programming out of his head and tweaks his arm, warns him to hide it.

“People see it, they’ll shoot at it or try to take it,” she says.

“You don’t gotta tell me twice,” Bucky says and lifts his shirt to show her evidence of his firsthand knowledge. 

His skin isn’t carved up, but it’s close, ropes of scars at the shoulder to his amputated arm, a cluster of scars in the shape of a star on his side, burn marks on his back, and a single bullet hole, now healed over, on his lower left side.

“Your attempts at seduction will not work,” Shuri says, making a face. “You are my brother’s age. Old.”

That punches a laugh out of Bucky, loud and ugly.

Just like Becca.

*

Bucky comes back to the bar, his boots heavy and loud against the old wood floor. The mother and her child have left. The old man is still holding court, although the woman with the black hair has since stopped listening. The Asian man is asleep. There’s someone else at the bar now, old and pale with a nose a bit like someone took a hammer to it. There’s another man at the booth that hugs the wall, nursing a tankard.

It’s all of the travelers and low lifes he’s used to, but there’s a feeling at the back of his neck that makes him nervous. His hairs stand on end. When he swallows, his jaw clicks.

He considers leaving.

He could walk out right now, take the disk and bury it under six feet of clay. It would save his life and end it in the same breath. He would be known as a coward until time’s end, but he could try to find Becca, make a new kind of life for himself.

It’s a foolish thought as soon as he’s had it. There is no life for him anymore, except for this, and Becca, wherever she is, is better off without him for it. 

“You want to head East, make sure to have your papers,” Drax says to Bucky at the bar. 

He slides a bowl across to him, the spoon rattling against the chipped ceramic. There’s a hunk of tough looking sourdough bread resting on the plate underneath. The aroma is tantalizing though, thick carrots and large squares of potato floating with chunks of beef in the tangy and hearty liquid. 

Bucky’s mouth waters and he takes his seat again, ignoring the unrest at the base of his spine. Whatever is going to happen can wait for him to fill his stomach.

He rips a piece of the bread and starts dipping it into the stew. 

“People still got papers?” Bucky asks and Drax snorts.

“People who want to live,” Drax says. He pours water, no ice, into a glass that hopefully is colored dark on purpose. “If you’re not State, you got no business travelin’ alone.”

“You want I should fake State papers?” Bucky asks, raising an eyebrow. He eats the piece of sopping bread. The bread is a little stale, but the stew tastes as good as it smells. He nearly groans from delight. 

“Don’t be a smartass,” Drax says. He slides the water across to Bucky with an uneasy look. Then he leans closer. “Listen, they stay away from Liberty City. We’ve been lucky so far. No raids, no raised eyebrows or nothin’. But that’s because Liberty City minds the rules. We’re out here in the middle of goddamned nowhere and yeah we’re all wretched, the bottom of the fuckin’ barrel, but we know not to call the evil eye on us.”

“The evil eye,” Bucky muses. He takes a spoonful of soup. “Now there’s a superstition I haven’t heard since I was a kid.”

“Laugh all you want, stranger,” Drax says. He straightens. “If you’re not careful, bad luck’s gonna come looking.”

“Problem is,” a voice says. “Bad luck always comes looking. Doesn’t matter how careful you are.”

Bucky freezes in his seat, bread of soup and beef chunk halfway to his mouth. He can see Drax freeze too, although not as obviously. The bartender’s probably used to this, hushed conversations, bordering illicit, and the sudden intrusion of an unwanted ear. 

“Reckon that’s right,” Drax says slowly. He nods at the newcomer. 

Bucky straightens in his chair, turns his head slightly to see--the man he had bumped into earlier. He’s broad in the shoulders and in the chest, his brown cloak dusty, the hood still covering his head. 

“Sorry for eavesdropping,” the stranger says. “The stew smelled too good. Couldn’t resist. You recommend it?”

Bucky feels it again, that bad feeling in his neck. It crawls under his skin now and he can’t tell if it’s paranoia or the man beside him. It could well be both.

“Yeah,” he says slowly. He swallows and breaks off another piece of bread. After a moment, he offers it to the stranger.

“Kind of you,” the stranger says and takes it. 

Bucky spies a flash of blue eyes. 

“We’re all travelers,” Bucky says. He raises an eyebrow. “Unless you’re a wraith.”

The stranger seems to pause for a moment and then he lets out something like a low chuckle. He reaches up with his free hand and tugs the hood down.

“Sorry,” he says. “It’s dusty outside.”

The dim light of the tavern does no one any favors, but even the faint sepia cast of burning out light bulbs can’t hide the arresting handsomeness of the man’s face. He has a symmetrical one, with a nose that looks like it might have gotten broken once, but healed almost all the way properly, except for the very last little bit. The lower half of his face is covered with pleasing, blond scruff. His skin is pale, but wind burnt, a little rougher than smooth. He has a healed scar running down the right side of his face, from temple to just above his jaw. He has another small scar cutting through his left eyebrow and one that’s healing near the left corner of his lips. His blue eyes are even brighter without the hood, his dirty blond hair just a little long.

He has all the marks of someone who should look too worn from time and life to be attractive, but who takes those flaws and turns them into something dangerous and beautiful. 

Bucky doesn’t know what to say. 

“Guess it’s right I give you my name since you let me try your stew,” the man says. He dips the bread into the soup and lifts it up to his lips. Bucky follows the movement carefully, watching as the bread moves past his lips and disappears. The man’s Adam’s apple moves up and down as he chews and bobs once as he swallows. 

“Yeah,” Bucky says and his eyes flicker up to the man’s eyes. “That’s the rules of the road.”

The man seems like he wants to smile, but refrains from doing so. He doesn’t seem like someone who smiles often. 

“Rogers,” he says. “Steve Rogers.”

“Rogers,” Bucky nods at him. 

“Your name is Rogers too?” Steve Rogers asks, raising an eyebrow. 

“No,” Bucky snorts. “Barnes. James.”

Steve nods and says nothing more for the time being.

Bucky returns to his stew, but keeps a watch on the stranger out of the corner of his eyes, wary and hyperaware. Steve makes no further moves though, just beckons Drax back over.

“Whiskey,” he says. “And the same stew, please.”

Drax nods at him, but not before his eyes flicker over to Bucky. It’s not uncommon for travelers to share their weary souls and company with one another, but it’s not late enough yet for all that. Under the cover of night and copious amounts of liquid there’s a camaraderie that eases the bridges between the people of this new world. 

Things are more acceptable when it’s dark out and travelers are wandering from tavern to tavern and tavern to brothel. A well fucked traveler or a traveler looking for a good fuck is always more inclined than not to stop by, knock back a few shots, and trade war stories they wouldn’t speak aloud during the bright vulnerability of day. 

Drax takes Steve’s order anyway. 

Bucky finishes half of his stew by the time Steve breaks the silence. 

“He’s not wrong,” the other man says. “The road’s not like it was even a few years back.”

Bucky tries not to raise his eyebrow at that. 

“You been traveling long then?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “I know the area around here like the back of my hand, but I stick mainly to the road. Stay a coupla months in a place and then move on.”

“Nothing keeping you anywhere?” Bucky asks. It’s a dangerously personal question, but Steve’s offering dangerously personal information. 

“Not anymore,” Steve says. “What about you?”

Bucky knows better than to give a perfect stranger even a crumb of information about himself. 

“Just got here,” Bucky says. “Was gonna meet my sweetheart, get on the road with her. Hasn’t met me yet though.”

“What’s she doing in a place like this?” Steve asks. 

“Her dad doesn’t like me much,” Bucky says and offers what he hopes is a wolfish grin. “Had to run away to be together.”

Steve whistles low as Drax brings him his whiskey. 

“A regular old Romeo and Juliet over here,” he says.

“Hopin’ to skip the tragedy,” Bucky says. He finishes his bread and reaches for his water.

“Where is she?” Steve asks. “It’s not right to be on the road by yourself. You know how the State is.” 

“Not here yet,” Bucky says and raises a shoulder as though it’s nothing. As though being a single traveler on the road, without State papers isn’t going to get him shot through the head immediately. “But she will be.” 

“She pretty?” Steve asks with a grin. He takes his glass and drinks half of it in two gulps. He doesn’t even wince.

“Oh yeah,” Bucky says, humorlessly. “Prettiest gal you did see West of Cold Spring.” 

Steve seems to pause at that. Then he tips back the rest of the whiskey and half slams the glass down on the counter.

“You don’t really talk like that, do you?” he asks with a laugh.

This time, Bucky has to smile.

“Nah,” he says. “She is gorgeous though.”

“I bet,” Steve says. Drax brings him his stew and puts it in front of him. “She sounds like a fox.”

Bucky, who has a name ready on his tongue if Steve asks, nods. 

“Yep,” he says. 

“Foxes are good,” Steve says. It’s an objectively weird statement, but Bucky doesn’t know the man. He watches as Steve scoops up a spoonful of stew and sticks it in his mouth. “Now, me, Barnes--I’m no fox.”

“No?” Bucky raises an eyebrow, clearly baffled.

“Nah,” Steve says. He swallows and turns to Bucky with a grin, a truly wolfish, broad grin. It stretches across his face, elongates his scars. “Me? I’m a coyote.” 

Bucky, who had been holding his own spoon, lets it clatter to the bowl.

  
_picture: bucky and steve meeting at the bar; art by 779H41_

 

“First thing’s first,” Steve says, voice low. He leans closer to Bucky, seems to look over his shoulder, help with the spoon and the bowl, but really whispers into his ear. “Never use your real name. Your face is plastered to high heavens, all over the country. You think it matters that they call you The Winter Soldier? It doesn’t. Don’t let anyone connect the dots.”

Bucky can feel his breath come up shallow, his heart beating wildly in his chest. 

“Second,” Steve says and his mouth brushes the shell of Bucky’s ears. “There’s a guy at the counter and a guy in the booth in the back. In one minute they’re gonna shoot you for bounty.” 

Bucky can feel his pulse spike, the adrenaline flooding his system. He looks ahead at the back of Drax’s head. 

“And third?” he murmurs, because there’s an unspoken third, he can feel it.

Steve pulls back and Bucky turns his head to look at him. 

“And third,” the other man says.

Then Steve pulls him forward and kisses him. 

 

Two seconds before he unsheathes two Colts and opens fire.

*

_and I find it kinda funny_  
_I find it kinda sad_  
_the dreams in which I'm dying_  
_are the best I've ever had_  
[mad world; gary jules (ft. michael andrews)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa-ae6_okmg)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *coyote is another term for smuggler


	2. on the road; western district.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Behind the papers, there’s a small clear bag.”
> 
> Bucky looks at him questioningly, but does what he’s told. He takes the passports and fake papers out and puts them on his lap and reaches back in. It’s only then that he notices the small clear rectangle of plastic.
> 
> He takes it out and something glints a worn, dark silver. Two somethings, actually.
> 
> Bucky opens the plastic bag and slides the wedding rings onto his palm.

_lonely shadows following me_  
_lonely ghosts come a-calling_  
_lonely voices talking to me_  
_now I'm gone, now I'm gone, now I'm gone_

 

*

**the road; western district.**

The wreckage around them makes him feel guilty for a minute. There’s no other way to explain the scene except for that; wreckage. There’s shattered glass sprayed across the floor, lanterns split in two, the bar riddled with bullet holes, alcohol cascading down what remains of the shattered wall of bottles like some kind of a waterfall of liquor. Around them stools and tables are turned up, turned on their sides, cracked down the middle, and shattered by bullets.

When he walks over wooden wreckage, glass shards and bullet shells crunch under his boots.

He winces, calming his breathing as best he can, wiping sweat from his forehead. He considers ripping part of his shirt to staunch the bleeding, but he only has the one. So instead, he bends down, tears off a strip from the dead man’s shirt.

It’s not easy binding an arm wound with only one hand, but it’s not the first time he’s done it and it won’t be the last.

Bucky finishes tying it off as Steve straightens. He has some flecks of blood on him, but it’s mostly just dirt and grime from the fire fight.

“You okay?” he asks Bucky, nodding at his arm.

“Just a graze,” Bucky says. “Find anything?”

“Nothing on them,” Steve says. He kicks over the second dead man before leaning down to pick up the dead man’s gun. He already stripped the other dead man of his weapon and what cash he had in his pocket. “Just normal bounty hunters.”

“All the way out West?” Bucky asks uneasily.

“Maybe try to stop blowing up HYDRA compounds,” Steve mutters. He sighs and surveys the wreckage. “People will come asking questions.”

Bucky feels something a little like sorrow. Liberty City had been the last safe haven in this fucked up, godforsaken world. It minded its own business and as a result, HYDRA minded its own. In one minute, Bucky had fucked that all to hell and back.

“How fast will the word spread?” Bucky asks.

The patrons are gone now--the mother and the child had cowered beneath the booth and the Asian man and the man with the one eye had disappeared. At least no one had gotten killed in the middle, Bucky thinks, although it’s little to no consolation.

“It’ll spread,” a voice says and Bucky nearly freezes before he sees Drax behind the counter with his own gun. “But we’ll buy you time.”

Bucky looks at him, the kindness, or determination, to aid a stranger unimaginable to him.

“Why?” he has to ask.

“Liberty City takes care of its own,” Drax says. He puts his gun down on the counter. Glass crunches underneath the light movement.

“I’m not one of your own,” Bucky says.

“Every wanderin’ soul is one of ours,” Drax says. “You come here, you’re our guest. You don’t cause trouble and we take care of you. That’s the rules of hosting.”

“I did cause trouble though,” Bucky replies and thinks, briefly, it’s stupid he’s fighting this when it’s the only thing keeping him alive.

Drax shrugs.

“Some people don’t cause trouble,” he says. “Some people get found by trouble. You seem like the latter.”

“He’s both,” Steve mutters, although Drax must not hear, because he nods toward the broken door, hanging off its hinges and creaking in the middle of the doorway.

“Head East,” Drax says. “Stay with your man, make sure people know you’re together. It’s the only way you’ll survive.”

Bucky looks at Steve, this strange coyote, and briefly remembers the feel of his mouth on his own.

“We’ll keep the State away long as we can,” Drax says. “But--”

Bucky looks back to Drax.

“Don’t come back,” the bartender says, his eyes hard.

It’s more than they deserve. Steve moves toward the door and Bucky nods, a familiar weariness weighing down on his shoulders.

“Thank you,” Bucky says. “For the stew.”

Drax grunts and turns to begin cleaning up his bar.

Bucky looks around one more at the wreckage, feels his chest twist dully, and follows Steve out into the streets.  
  
  
The dry, desert ground under Liberty City runs through with thick cracks under the hot midday sun. Bucky looks up at the sky, endless and deepening in blue. The sun careens off to the side, making it sometime past the noon hour by Bucky's reckoning. The heat, thick and dry, settles on his skin, making the dirt and blood, now caked in spots along his arm, feel heavier than they had inside the cool shade of The Guardian. If it’s November, it’s the hottest fucking November Bucky’s felt since they’d fucked the planet past the point of redemption. Sweat slicks the back of his neck, the hot air pressing against him. Of all of the things the bounty hunters had taken from him, he thinks the most disappointing is the chance for a shower, to wash the dust and dirt out of his hair.

He runs a hand through it and finds it matted in places, snarls and tangles at the ends. Once, he had loved his hair. It's innocuous, but he misses that too. Having something as simple as vanity to look forward to.

"Hey," Steve says and Bucky looks to his right.

The blond man has his hand on the light post in front of an apothecary three shops down from the battered tavern. The apothecary's windows are dark, but Bucky thinks he sees a pair of eyes peering out from behind old wooden blinds. Every city has eyes and mouths and Liberty City is far from an exception.

  
_picture: steve in front of the apothecary; art by fannishlove_

Steve jerks his head around the corner of the apothecary, where a set of wooden stairs climbs up to a terrace. Bucky follows him around, but they don't go up the stairs. Instead, Steve takes him behind the strip of buildings and across dry, cracked ground until they reach some kind of abandoned lot. There are rusted cars here, broken down bicycles, and even a wagon that's covered in dirt, disintegrating into the sand colored ground.

Bucky puts his hand on the side of the wagon and rubs his palm across it. His hand comes away with a layer of dirt and sand. Under, there's letters carved into the wooden slats. _SAN FRANCISCO._ He's not entirely sure what it means, except that it rings dimly in the recesses of his mind, recalling history lessons his mother sat him down for, her arm around his shoulder, leaning down over him, helping him read from a book, a textbook, smuggled in and deeply forbidden.

It aches somewhere low in his chest, the feel of his mother's arms and the scent of her hair falling over his shoulder. Memories of her before a HYDRA soldier put a pistol against her forehead and blew her brains out. He keeps the memory locked away somewhere he can't easily reach, along with the rest of his memories before that day. There's a _before_ and an _after_ in everyone's life and Bucky; he doesn't try to reach for the before. He's only _after_ now.

Bucky straightens and sees Steve ten yards ahead of him, his hand running along the hood of a blue truck.

"You come with a truck?" Bucky asks with a frown and Steve snorts.

"Yeah, I carry it around in my back pocket," Steve says. He turns toward Bucky, his long, brown duster swinging out slightly behind him as a swirl of sand rises with the wind. "No. Took it from someone."

"Are they gonna come looking for it?" Bucky asks, eyebrow raised.

The sun glints off the rounded edges of the truck, as worn from the wind and sand as the steel is. The blue is as faded as the sides look beat, but there aren't any bullet holes, there's a bumper, and there's even four wheels. Bucky can see a tarp spread across the trunk.

"We'd have bigger problems than ownership if they did," Steve says and for a moment his mouth twitches. It softens his face for the second it lasts, but then it's gone. "Come on. It's got gas."

Bucky can't remember the last time he was in a moving vehicle of some sort. He thinks it was either in his old life or somewhere in the middle of the country, being smuggled from one district to the other. Memories have no meaning, when someone’s taken the borders from between them all.

He walks around to the passenger's side and presses his hand to the door handle. His skin sears almost immediately and he hisses in pain, snatching his hand back as though it's been burned. He turns it over and sees his palm is already turning an angry red. He might have burned it, as it turns out.

"Careful," Steve's voice comes from the other side. "It's hot. Been sitting outside in the sun for too long."

"Thanks for the warning, jackass," Bucky mutters. Steve leans over from the driver’s side and opens the door from the inside, pushes it open so Bucky can slide in.

Bucky almost puts his seatbelt on before remembering there's no point anymore. That's part of his old life too.

Steve nods at him and then turns the key in the ignition.

"You know where we're going?" Bucky asks. He fingers the chain at his neck and looks at the unpaved dirt everywhere in front of them.

"Yeah," Steve says. "Gotta cut through Miller's Town and get over Cold Spring before we can get you close to the District."

The District's clear across the country, thousands of miles and hundreds of checkpoints away.

"The road's crawling with HYDRA," Steve says. He's looking out in front of them too, as though he's waiting for some kind of sign or just taking a breath. "There's papers in the glove box."

Bucky reaches forward and opens it. Two fake passports and a half dozen sheets of papers slide out onto his lap.

He takes one of the passports--a deep maroon, with a black star on top and _THE STATE OF HYDRA_ engraved into the leather underneath. He thumbs it open to the second page. There's no picture, but there is a name: _Yasha Dugan, Born: South Bend, Middle District, Status: Married._ He closes the passport and opens the matching second one. inside this one it says: _Jack Dugan, Born: Orleans, Southern District, Status: Married._

"Yasha and Jack, huh?" Bucky says. He rifles through the papers and finds fake marriage certificates, fake birth certificates, and travel papers. The Eyes had thought of everything.

"A regular--" Steve starts to say and then pauses. "I don't know how to end that. Are there any famous married couples? On the road, outlaws in love?"

Bucky snorts. Love, now there's an outdated concept.

"Not in this world," Bucky says and puts Yasha and Jack back into the glove compartment.

He sighs and leans back into the cracked and blisteringly hot leather seat. Steve reaches over and hands him a bottle of water.

"I got a stash of food and water in the middle," he says and Bucky looks at a bag that shifts and makes small noises under the dull rumbling of the truck's engine. "We have to make it last until we get to Miller's Town."

"Yeah," Bucky says. He takes the bottle of water with a nod of thanks. "How long's that?"

"A day," Steve says. "If nothing stops us before then."

Bucky takes a breath and a drink of the warm water. It feels good going down his throat.

Sure, he thinks. If nothing stops them. Like bounty hunters or mercenaries or State soldiers. Only a hundred things that could go wrong and a couple of thousand miles left to go until--

He fiddles with his chain again, his thumb brushing the small, metal circle at the end of it, tucked under his shirt and pressed against his chest.

"Guess we shouldn't let anyone stop us then," Bucky says.

Steve nods and shifts the gear from park to drive. After another moment of dull rumbling, dark fumes spew from the exhaust, and the old truck pulls out into the space in front of them, cracked ground rolling smoothly under its tires and the sky fading from blue to peaches to eventually navy above.  
  
  
There’s no clear road from Liberty City to Miller’s Town. They follow the remains of a wide old road, half gravel and half dirt, that cuts through the dry, arid landscape of the Western District. Old tire tracks dig into the ground at intervals, paths appearing up hills and disappearing through dead brushes on the downward side. They track their own path, the windows rolled down, the warm air buffeting against Bucky’s skin. He shrugs out of his jacket, his flesh arm braced against the windowsill. He lets his hand hang out over the edge, his fingers drumming against the side of the truck.

Steve is mostly quiet, but he looks over then, at the sunlight glinting off burnished metal and shifting plates. He raises an eyebrow.

“That’s not standard issue,” he says, meaning flesh.

Bucky snorts.

“Lost the standard issued one when HYDRA decided to cut it from my shoulder,” he says.

Steve lets out a low breath.

“Don’t suppose they asked first,” Steve says. His eyes flicker from the road to Bucky’s metal arm and then back to the road again.

“Yeah, sure, there was a consent form and everything. Sign the dotted line and we’ll perform unauthorized surgery,” Bucky snorts. He flexes the fingers on his metal hand. “Gave me anesthesia when they took a bonesaw to my arm.”

Steve doesn’t seem the squeamish type, but Bucky does see a flicker of discomfort cross his face.

“Was there a reason for it?” he asks.

Bucky doesn’t spend his time lingering on memories of his torture.

“Sadism, if I had to guess,” he says.

The silence between them is punctuated by the sounds rumbling in from outside; the gravel crunching under the truck’s tires, the wind whistling against the open window frame, the noise of animals chittering as the truck goes by, disrupting their usual patterns of peace.

“I’m sorry,” Steve eventually says. He looks at Bucky from the side of his eye.

Bucky shrugs.

“I’d do it again,” Bucky says, his expression growing darker. “They can take whatever limb they fucking want, I’ll keep blowing up their heads.”

The truck hits some kind of a bump and everything jolts up for a moment. They settle back down and drive on, Steve staring straight ahead, his fingers curled tightly over the steering wheel.

“Blow one up and another grows in its place,” he says quietly under his breath, an old adage Bucky hasn’t heard since he was a kid.

“I’ll blow them all up,” Bucky says, voice low. “Every fucking one of them. See if I don’t.”

He breathes out, heat and ash in his chest, the joint between his metal arm and scarred flesh shoulder burning in memory and retribution.

Steve doesn’t say anything else and they drive on straight, the wind whipping through bits and pieces of Steve’s hair, Bucky’s thumb brushing the small disc resting against the dip in his chest.  
  
  
They stop sometime when the sky is still a bright blue and they both need to piss. It’s a five minute break emptying their bladders out against brush that comes up to their knees. Bucky doesn’t know where they are and Steve doesn’t offer any answers, but the landscape is changing slowly as they drive, the arid, bright red clays of the edge of the Western district turning a little browner, small mountains in the distance, hills covered in clumps of grass and brush the size of small trees.

Bucky uses some of the water to wash his hands after and then pours a little over his face, rubbing away some of the dirt from his travels.

Steve rummages in their pack and retrieves two sandwiches, throws one wrapped one to Bucky, who instinctively catches it. The bread is hard, the dubious meat overly salty, and the cheese bordering on going bad, but it’s the first food he’s had since the beef stew and beggars can’t be choosers.

“What’s your story?” Bucky asks, leaning against the hood of the truck and chewing around a particularly rough edge of bread.

“Which part?” Steve asks. He tears of an edge too, squints at it, and then flicks it a few feet away. A bird finds it a minute later, landing and pecking the piece apart.

“All of it, I guess,” Bucky shrugs. “Or whatever you want to share.”

He takes another bite of the sandwich and chews, then swallows. “How’d you end up out here?”

Steve’s quiet for a minute, picking at his sandwich and looking thoughtful.

“Grew up in the East,” Steve eventually says with a shrug. “Everything came down, HYDRA came up, felt there was nothing there for me over there anymore.”

“No family?” Bucky asks. “Someone to keep you there?”

Steve snorts, although it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Hard to have family in this world,” Steve says. “Harder to keep them. Better to cut your ties and keep moving.”

“Guess it depends on what it’s better for,” Bucky says. He picks at the cheese and thinks about Becca. It’s been years now since he’s seen her and yeah, it’s better for her, but he doesn’t know that it’s been better for him.

“You get too attached to someone here and they get taken from you,” Steve says. “Or you get taken from them. Doesn’t seem worth it in the end.”

“That’s an optimistic way to look at it,” Bucky says wryly. He picks out the cheese after all and throws it at the bird.

“What’s the point of optimism?” Steve says, almost darkly. He looks at his sandwich as though it’s posing him with an unanswerable question. “It’s only useful if there’s something to look forward to. When’s the last time you had something to look forward to?”

Bucky shrugs. “Can’t be doom and gloom all the time, Rogers.”

Steve’s mouth twitches.

“Who’s stopping me?”

Bucky snorts and takes another bite of the sandwich. The bread scratches against the back of his throat as he swallows.

“The way I see it, it plays into their hand,” he says. “You kill optimism, you kill hope, and you have nothing to live for. You take that away from the people and they become--battered, tired. No future in sight and no energy to fight for it. People get complacent. That’s how tyrants keep their power.”

“You got all that from doom and gloom?” Steve asks and Bucky snorts again. Steve takes half of the top piece of bread and throws it at the bird. “I don’t think optimism is what kicks fascists out of power.”

“Then what?” Bucky asks. He finishes his sandwich and wipes the crumbs on his pants.

“Blood,” Steve says, voice hard. “Lots of it.”

He doesn’t bother finishing his sandwich, just sets the rest of it in front of him, far enough away from the bird to not startle it, but close enough that it sees.

“You lose someone?” Bucky asks, watching Steve.

Steve turns toward the driver’s seat and Bucky catches a glimpse of his face, emotionless except for a cold kind of fury burning in his eyes.

“No,” he says shortly and climbs back into the truck.

Which is a blatant lie, not that Bucky knows him well enough to call him on it. Because, see, in this world, in HYDRA’s world, everyone has lost someone. It’s not so much of a question as it is a bitter truth.

Bucky sighs, looks up at the sky, the sun still high enough to make everything a dazzling, clear sort of blue, then gets back to the passenger’s seat.

“This,” Bucky says, strapping himself in.

Steve looks over at him questioningly before putting the truck into drive.

“You asked when’s the last time I looked forward to something,” Bucky says, “and the answer is this. I’m looking forward to this. I’m looking forward to taking everything from them. I’m looking forward to spilling blood, only this time, it won’t be mine.”

Steve studies him for a minute, closely, before whatever he’s thinking or feeling flickers off his face. He gives Bucky a grim smile instead.

“It’s always our blood that spills, Barnes,” he says. “Even when theirs spills too.”

It’s chilling in the hot desert air, but it’s not untrue. Bucky feels again for the gun resting against his hip. He closes his eyes and tips his head back, letting Steve drive them forward.

He still doesn’t really know anything about Steve, but he does know, now, that he’s angry; that he’s been hurt; that he knows the cost of blood. And for Bucky, for now, that’s more than enough.  
  


  
_picture: bucky in front of the blue truck, eating a sandwich; art by fannishlove_

  
There are few to no towns in between Liberty City and the next place and even if there were, they wouldn’t stop to wait for State soldiers to catch up to them. As it turns out, it’s them that catches up to the soldiers.

They’re half a day out from Miller’s Town by Steve’s estimation, when they see a blockade of tanks stretching out in a neat line about half a mile in front of them.

Bucky’s heart beats a little faster for it, a shock of nerves tightening in the pit of his stomach.

“Relax,” Steve mutters beside him. “And put your jacket back on.”

Steve doesn’t have to tell him twice. Bucky slides the jacket back over his shoulders, covering his metal arm, and digs in the pocket for the flesh imitating glove Shuri had created for him.

“How many checkpoints between here and Miller’s Town?” Bucky mutters.

Steve scans the blockade and shakes his head.

“Used to be one, but shouldn’t have run into it for another few hours,” he says. “This one’s new. New usually means some kind of bullshit. You got the papers, Yasha?”

Bucky opens the glove compartment again and then Steve says--

“Behind the papers, there’s a small clear bag.”

Bucky looks at him questioningly, but does what he’s told. He takes the passports and fake papers out and puts them on his lap and reaches back in. It’s only then that he notices the small clear rectangle of plastic.

He takes it out and something glints a worn, dark silver. Two somethings, actually.

Bucky opens the plastic bag and slides the wedding rings onto his palm. They’re both the same weighted, silver metal.

“Shit,” Bucky swears lowly. “Is this vibranium?”

“No expense spared for my beloved,” Steve says with a half-grin at Bucky.

Bucky snorts and takes one of the rings, slips it onto his metal ring finger. It’s the perfect size and magnetic besides. It slides easily onto the finger and stays there comfortably, not interfering with any of the grooves or his general dexterity.

“I’ll think about you when I trade the vibranium on the Market,” Bucky grins. He offers the other ring up to Steve, who extends a hand for it.

“I think the net value of the entire underground market doesn’t amount to the vibranium on your hand, so might be worth it to just keep the husband, instead,” Steve says. He shifts his hand from the steering wheel so he can push the ring onto his ring finger. Again, it slides onto his hand perfectly.

“I’ve never found a husband to be worth keeping,” Bucky says, with some kind of ridiculous wink that makes Steve puff out a breath of laughter.

Bucky puts the plastic bag back in the glove compartment and closes it.

The blockade draws closer and he licks his lips, fixes his hair, and tries not to let his nerves get the better of him.

“Relax,” Steve says again. “Don’t give them any reason to suspect you. Answer their questions. Don’t talk back. And for the love of God, don’t let them see your arm.”

Bucky doesn’t know what God has to do with it now, after all of this, but he supposes extra caution never killed a man.

“Jack Dugan’s one bossy son of a bitch,” Bucky says out loud.

“Jack Dugan’s fond of all of his limbs,” Steve says.

Bucky cocks his head and leans forward in his seat to get a better view of the tanks and State soldiers.

“Weird,” Bucky says. “Can’t relate.”

Steve snorts and Bucky takes a breath and they approach the HYDRA checkpoint.  
  
  
The checkpoint stretches out for a good half a mile, lined up tanks with their barrels facing either side of the landscape. In between the tanks are State soldiers, stances wide, assault rifles strapped across the front of their chests. They’re eerily still and eerily silent, dressed in the dark jungle greens and blacks of camo, although they do more to identify than camouflage them in this desertscape. It doesn’t really matter, Bucky supposes. State soldiers rarely need to be hidden and seek it even less.

Surprisingly, Bucky finds that they’re not the only ones being held at this checkpoint. Ahead of them there’s a man who must have been walking alone and on the other side of the tank barricade is a beat down, four wheeled, off-road vehicle. It’s the skeleton of a vehicle, really, with the roof and windows taken out. The man and woman sitting inside turn as a State soldier comes to the driver’s side door, helmet keeping their face obscured, automatic weapon strapped to their chest.

The moment is so tense, Bucky can taste copper on his tongue.  
He doesn’t have time to see what happens, because a shout pierces the muted sounds of the desert rumblings in front of them. The man shouts louder, his sharp voice curling into the anxiety in Bucky’s chest. Three State soldiers move in on the man with deadly swiftness, two restraining his arms, one slamming the butt of his rifle into the man’s nose.

Bucky doesn’t realize he’s moved forward until Steve’s arm suddenly darts out and slams him back against his seat. Bucky hisses, but Steve gives a low growl in warning.

The man screams, louder this time, but the State soldiers don’t acknowledge it. Papers flutter to the ground, blood splattering the front of the man’s shirt, crimson down his chin, specks onto the sheets on the ground. The soldiers move faster, the one in front of him grabbing him by the throat, and the others letting go. The other two step back as the first guard throws him against the ground.

Again, the man shouts, even tries to crawl away, but that’s the fatal mistake. The soldier lifts a glock from the side of his vest, aims, and shoots.

“Yasha,” Steve says dangerously and it’s only then that Bucky realizes his hand is on the handle of the door, his blood pounding in his head, his entire body vibrating with anger.

“Those motherfuckers,” Bucky hisses. “Those godless, fascist, soulless, _cockroaches_.”

“Calm the _fuck_ down,” Steve nearly growls again. He hasn’t let Bucky go yet, his fingers digging into Bucky’s chest, hard.

Bucky can feel the cold fury slide down his spine, his controls snapping one by one. His mind is on the verge of being wiped clean, the perfect, empty conduit for rage.

“Not _now_ ,” Steve hisses. “You have two minutes to get your head out of your ass. I don’t care if that guy was your _brother_. He came to the checkpoint without a partner, he ran the fucking risks. You’re not going to get us killed here, so I suggest thinking _happy thing_ s and putting a fucking smile on your face. _Husband_.”

Bucky grits his teeth, still shaking, and shoves Steve’s hand away. His hands are curled into fists, his nails digging into his palms. He rams his flesh hand against the side of the truck door, using the sheer physicality of pain to keep him from losing it.

Steve’s eyes flicker over to him, but whatever he’s feeling, he shoves off his face immediately. He’s so serene by the time they approach the guards that no one would be able to say he had just witnessed a ruthless execution.

The two guards that had let the first murder the man drag his body away. The first soldier, face still covered, approaches the driver’s side of the truck and motions to Steve to kill the engine.

Steve does so and they both roll down their windows.

“Papers,” the soldier grunts.

State soldiers are technically human, in the biological meaning of the word, but it’s still always a shock to hear it, the human voice mindlessly carrying out the brutal instructions of a fascist regime. There’s no visible face, but there are eyes that peek out from an empty slit between the mouth portion and the helmet and that’s shocking too; human eyes belonging to a soulless killing machine.

“Hon’,” Steve says, looking over to Bucky, in an affected drawl and with a lazy smile. “Passports and the papers.”

Bucky gives some approximation of a smile and hands over the fake passports and fake papers. The nervous adrenaline pulses somewhere near the top of his chest. The anger he had felt and the horror he had seen get stifled for the moment, survival instincts and the low, sharp grip of fear taking over momentarily.

Steve hands them over and the soldier glares at both of them. Bucky sees movement out of the corner of his eyes and watches as another soldier starts to meander toward his side of the door. He uncurls the flesh hand from a fist and rests it on the door. His metal hand, bearing the flesh colored glove, rests in the middle of the truck, between him and Steve.

When the State soldier is busy looking through the passports, Steve covers Bucky’s hand with his own, quick as a flash. It helps Bucky’s nerves in a sense, just the pressure of someone else’s flesh against his.

“You married?” the soldier grunts and Steve smiles.

“Yeah, three years now,” he says. “Ain’t that right, sugar?”

Bucky’s smile feels brittle on his face, but he forces it wider, maybe a little bashful at the edges.

“Yeah. Best years of my life,” he says. He leans forward on impulse and Steve seems to read his mind immediately, turns his head to kiss him.

The kiss is dry, closed, with the feel of caution and panic on both of their ends.

The soldier grunts.

“Yasha and Jack Dugan,” he says. “Where’d you two meet?”

“I grew up in the middle of the country,” Bucky says. “Jack here’s from Orleans. My parents owned a farm that dried out with the heat and his Pa died for the country.”

The soldier immediately turns to Steve.

“Soldier?” he asks.

“For the State,” Steve says.

“Why aren’t you?” the soldier asks, harshly.

“Bum knee,” Steve says, sounding sad. “Accident when I was younger. Tried to jump in a lake and hit my knee against rocks. Haven’t been able to walk well since, let alone run.”

“Still good in bed though,” Bucky says with a grin and a kiss to Steve’s hand. “If that’s what you’re wonderin’.”

“Wasn’t,” the soldier says and hands the passports back. Now he looks at the fake documents. “Then what?”

“Met at a bar somewhere in between,” Steve says with a wolfish grin. It distorts the scar on his face, makes it ripple in the middle. “Him runnin’ from his future, me runnin’ from my past. Sometimes it just works out like that.”

The other soldier appears at Bucky’s window. They look in, eyes lingering on Bucky and Steve’s hands, entertwined in between them. Bucky’s wedding ring glints on his fake flesh colored finger. The soldier’s eyes are a muddy brown.

“Sounds too easy,” the first guard mutters.

“There’s nothin’ easy about hiking up from Orleans to crossroads in the middle,” Steve drawls. “Unless you want the gritty version.”

“Which is?”

“He was drinkin’ at the bar and I liked the way he looked, so I told him I’d suck his dick if he didn’t mind,” Steve says.

The first soldier pauses, paper crinkling in his hand, while the other soldier sticks their head in.

“That true?” the second soldier asks. The voice is unmistakably female. Bucky can’t see her face, but he can smell her breath, sour like rotten milk.

“Best blow job I’ve gotten,” Bucky grins. “He’s good with his mouth and tongue.”

The first soldier glares, but Bucky hears what he swears is a snort from the second.

“That’s all it takes for marriage?” the first soldier says coldly. “A blowjob in a bar bathroom?”

“You weren’t there for the blowjob,” Bucky says with a wink. Steve’s hand tightens imperceptibly around his own, which Bucky primarily feels because of a change in pressure between them. “Anyway, I was living there by then, somewhere southeast of the old Missouri River, doing back-breaking labor to make ends meet. Ma and Pa had died by then, probably of a broken heart. S--Jack kept floatin’ in and out of town, then got a job on the railroad. Kept meeting at the bar.”

“Two years later figured we should make it official,” Steve says and this time he lifts their hands, kisses Bucky’s fingers. His mouth lingers on the fake wedding band. “Makes it easier to travel.”

“Why traveling?” the first soldier says. He sounds like he’s baring his teeth, although they can’t see.

Next to him, the second guard hasn’t moved, is simply leaning through the window, her breathing rattling through the face mask.

“To see where life takes us, I guess,” Steve shrugs. “See what the country has to offer, the greatness of HYDRA.”

“Hail HYDRA,” the soldiers say at the same time.

“Hail HYDRA,” Steve agrees.

There’s another few, tense moments of the first soldier rifling through the papers and the second just watching them, breathing loudly. Bucky turns his head and sees hazel eyes staring at him.

“Where are you going?” the second one asks him.

“Miller’s Town,” Bucky says.

“What’s there?” she asks.

“Maybe nothing,” Bucky says. “Maybe something. A place to fuck, maybe some hot food. Why, you got a suggestion?”

For a second the soldier says nothing. Then she leans closer and says, “The goat sandwich at the Four Trails Lodge. Best in this part of the country.”

Bucky blinks at her and she removes herself from the window, starts walking back toward the line of tanks.

“Don’t stay on the road after dark,” the first soldier finally grunts and gives Steve the fake papers back. “You’ll get shot and you’ll deserve it.”

Steve takes the papers back and hands them to Bucky to put back into the glove compartment.

“Thanks for the advice,” Steve says. “Planning on being in a bed long before then.”

The soldier makes a disgruntled noise and pulls back. Then he motions to the soldiers in front of the blockade and they move aside to let the truck through.

Steve nods at the soldier and puts the truck back into drive.

Bucky lets out a harsh sigh of relief, his shoulders slumping, as they pull through to the other side.

He waits a full half a mile until they’re past the barricade before slamming his fist into the glove compartment, his mind full of the splattered blood of the murdered man, and screams.  
  


*

_oh, a thousand faces staring at me_  
_thousand times I've fallen_  
_thousand voices dead at my feet_  
_now I'm gone, now I'm gone, now I'm gone_  
[fire; barns courtney](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLEoictM8p4)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your kindness and enthusiasm!! I'm crying_emoji.jpg over here. ♥
> 
> Also, how amazing is Shin's art? Leave her some love [on Twitter](https://twitter.com/shinzz1) if you're so inclined!


	3. miller's town; western district.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It binds them, Bucky thinks, in a way. His anger and his violence and Steve’s unmovable, lack of forgiveness and faith. At the core of them both is something HYDRA has taken and something HYDRA has given. 
> 
> It’s unbalanced, whatever it is. It festers in them both, growing in the poison of their blood, eating away at their minds and what’s left of their souls.

_down and out, and out of luck_  
_we're spinning, but the needle 's stuck_  
_let's go have some fun before_  
_they go and put us in the ground_

 

*

**miller’s town; western district. ******

They pass through one more checkpoint before the dry roads and brush start to give away to more fertile landscape. The change is gradual, but apparent. Bucky leans his forehead against the top frame of his window, the glass rolled down, his hand dangling out into air that’s fast cooling.

All around them, the dust and clay slowly become sharp, green trees, heavy with needles, tall, unchecked grass, and mountains spread across the distance as far as his eyes can see. It’s lush. The road winds forward and thick grey clouds brush against snowpierced mountaintops. It is the exact opposite of Liberty City in every way.

“You pass through before?” Bucky asks with a yawn.

His route west before had been under the cover of night and through towns not likely to be on a map.

“Once,” Steve says and offers little else.

He’s mostly taciturn, his coyote, eyes on the road, one hand on the wheel, the other on the window frame. Bucky watches him out of sheer boredom and no little amount of interest. It’s easier to brush his eyes over Steve’s serious features under the cover of dark, his profile lit by moonlight. His eyelashes dust high cheekbones, clear blue eyes illuminated by the light filtering through. His hands are large and rough, scratches and scars criss-crossing their way over weathered skin. They’re hands that have seen hard work and been worn down by it. Bucky vaguely recalls the feel of a large, rough palm in his own, hours earlier.

Steve’s hair, dark blond, is longer than it should be, but combed back, his beard and facial hair a shade darker than what’s on top. Bucky can only imagine it, the hair that runs down to his chest, the blond fuzz covering his arms, crawling from the back of his hand and up toward his strong shoulders. He’s all hard muscle, a pure, raw physicality only barely restrained by the sand-colored clothes and grey cloak he wears.

“Your scar,” Bucky says, eyeing the line running from Steve’s temple to his jaw. “What happened?”

Steve doesn’t answer immediately.

“Made an enemy out of someone better left alone,” he says quietly, eventually.

It’s a sharp scar, that must is obvious. A blade, Bucky thinks. Or something worse. Something made to kill.

“You survived,” Bucky says, watching him.

Steve doesn’t say anything. Not for a long while.

Bucky’s breathing starts evening out eventually, his eyes growing heavy with nothing but the sound of wheels on gravel for company.

“Depends what you mean by survive,” Bucky thinks he hears, just before falling asleep.

 

He’s shaken awake by Steve.

“Lights ahead,” Steve says and Bucky straightens.

He presses his palms into his eyes, rubbing the sleep out of them. His body aches from the unforgiving seats in the truck.

When he looks up, he can see what Steve is seeing.

Where there should be dark rocks and the smudge of trees from horizon to horizon is, instead, spread out, all before them, lights. Lanterns, inside houses, making his whole vision glow.

“Miller’s Town,” Steve says, and puts pressure to the gas.  
  
  
Like most of the towns that make up the consciousness of the middle country, Miller’s Town is a small, tight-knit cluster of houses and storefronts. The boarded slats of the building are old, deep browns faded to hues of yellow and grey with age. The air smells like the fresh pass of mountains and sits cold and heavy in their lungs.

Bucky stretches his limbs, hears his shoulders pop as Steve cuts the engine. He parks the truck somewhere behind a tavern, in a yard of rock and dirt attached to a stable of horses.

“We stay the night,” Steve says as he gets out of the truck, stretching his own arms out in front of him. His cloak shifts and then shifts back, settling around his worn duster. “Get some rest, restock our supplies, and get back on the road by noon tomorrow.”

That sounds ambitious, although Bucky doesn’t say so. He knows the minute his head hits a pillow, he’s going to be dead to the world.

“I know the tavern keep here,” Steve says, looking ahead of them. His eyes slide back over to Bucky. “I’ll make sure the room has privacy. And a bath.”

It’s pointed, but well, Bucky can’t exactly deny that he smells like day old sweat, dried blood, and the bottom of a distillery.  
  
  
The Blue Star Tavern is named for the aptly painted blue star on the faded grey slats of its shop front. Three stories high and only half as wide, the tavern looks like it might tip over given half a gust of wind. Bucky scratched his nose, tries to wipe some of the grime off of his caked face, and follows Steve in.

It’s bustling inside, the tavern lit under the light of half a dozen lanterns ensconced into the walls. There are long wooden tables and people sitting around, eating, talking, even laughing.

It’s a foreign sound to Bucky. He hasn’t heard laughter in a good stretch.

Steve ducks his head in and the low rumble of voices goes on. There are three women in blue dresses serving the customers and another woman behind a counter, counting bills and yelling over her shoulder at someone in the kitchens. This woman has her brown hair pulled back and is clearly identifiable in her white blouse, pin-striped, buttoned vest, and black bowtie at the throat, as the person to whom deference is paid and balances are settled.

“No I didn’t tell him he could take step outside for a smoke break,” she’s barking as Steve and Bucky sidestep one of the women in blue. They’re balancing a precarious number of drinks and suppers on trays and while Bucky is tempted to just reach forward and take one for himself, he shuffles himself tight into a corner to let them pass.

Someone from the kitchen must yell something back, which doesn’t stop or distract from any of the activity in the front room. If anything, the kitchen’s yelling only encourages the din, raises the level to a bit of a dull roar. Bucky nearly gets flattened by a patron who stands up and sways on his feet. He’s built like two brick houses and he’s had more than enough to drink.

Bucky’s head aches and his stomach rumbles. There’s a layer of smoke above the merrymaking that makes everything a bit hazy.

“C’mon,” Steve mutters and works his way around one of the long tables.

By the time they approach the tavern keeper, someone’s dropped their drink, someone else has started shouting, and apparently, whoever went out to take an unsolicited smoke break has returned, much to the tavern keeper’s displeasure.

“I’ll wring his neck is what I’ll do,” she shouts over her shoulder again.

“ _What’m I supposed to do about it?_ ” someone in the kitchen yells back—Steve and Bucky can more or less discern the exchange now.

“Hire better assistants!” the tavern keeper yells. She turns back to her bills, her face stormy. “I pay them a livable wage in this godforsaken hellscape and this is the thanks I get.”

“Bad time?” Steve asks.

The woman looks up, face immediately serene, the kind of instantaneous switch that belongs to either a sociopath or someone used to dealing with customers.

“What can I help you for?” she asks. She doesn’t bother hiding the till, a stack of cash in her long fingers.

“Now Maria Hill, I know you know me better than that,” Steve says with half a grin.

The tavern keep—Maria Hill, squints at Steve before her face lights up in recognition.

“Are you shitting me?” she asks with a grin.

“Would I do that to a lady?” Steve leans forward, one palm on the counter.

“A lady no,” Maria snorts. “Me, yes. Thought you got kicked out of Miller’s Town, Rogers.”

Steve shrugs.

“Let me rephrase,” Maria says wryly. “Thought I kicked you out.”

“Bygones and all that,” Steve says. “I thought you’d forgiven me by now.”

“I think you left me in the middle of nowhere with nothing to my name,” Maria says. She finishes counting the money and wraps a rubberband around the wad.

“First of all, it was a casino in St. Louis and second of all, you were armed to the teeth,” Steve says. “And I had to go.”

“You know I have a gambling problem,” Maria says. “And you left me anyway. You owe me. Who’s this?”

It’s only then that she jerks her head, acknowledging Bucky.

“Yasha,” Steve says. “My husband.”

“I’m sorry,” Maria says, raising an eyebrow. “Some poor bastard agreed to marry you? No offense—”

“—Yasha,” Bucky says. He sticks his hand out and Maria takes it graciously. She has a firm handshake, which is exactly what Bucky would have expected. There’s something about her that seems, well, if not familiar, then comforting. Bucky can’t place it.

She rescinds her hand and Bucky sees a smudge on her wrist before it’s by her side again.

“Yasha,” Maria agrees. “You agree to marry this asshole, Yasha?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Bucky says with a half-smile.

“Better you than me,” Maria says. “Don’t let him take you to a casino and definitely don’t expect him to stick around after. You two need something to eat?”

“Please,” Steve says. He looks too amused for all of this. It doesn’t reach his eyes, but very few things do. Still, his scarred face softens and that’s at least something. “And a room, Maria.”

That makes Maria pause, halfway to turning around to yell some more.

“You’re staying?” she asks, eyebrow raised.

Whatever Maria Hill had expected, it evidently wasn’t that.

“Just the night,” Steve promises.

Someone behind Bucky drops a tankard of beer and Maria stops to yell at them a moment before turning back to Steve and Bucky. If Bucky wasn’t well aware of people looking uncomfortably at him, he wouldn’t have caught the flicker of discomfort that crosses her face. As such, it’s clear to him that there’s something the matter here.

“I don’t know, Steve,” she says. “We’re pretty full. Have you tried the Four Trails Lodge? Just a few blocks East from here and they have plenty of space and a nice goat sandw—”

“Maria,” Steve says, pressing. “If I wanted to stay at the Four Trails, you think we’d be here right now? You’re really gonna hold a grudge that long?”

Maria gives Steve an unimpressed look.

“You know full well this has nothing to do with the casino, Rogers,” she says. She looks uncomfortable, leans back from the counter with her arms crossed at the chest. “You bring trouble wherever you go.”

“Trouble finds me,” Steve says. “There’s a difference.”

“I’m not Drax,” Maria says. Steve and Bucky must look surprised because Maria snorts. “Yeah, you think I didn’t hear about that? You might travel fast, but news travels faster. I don’t know what trouble you’re mixed up in this time, but I don’t want it.”

“Maria, be reasonable—” Steve tries to argue, but the woman cuts him off.

“Don’t tell me to be reasonable, Steve, you’re more trouble than you’re worth—” Maria’s eyes flash at Steve. She uncrosses her arms and her sleeves shift at her wrists.

Bucky realizes then, what’s missing. Or, rather, he startles into the knowledge that he knows exactly what to say. He knows who she is or, at least, what.

“Maria,” Bucky says and both Steve and Maria stop, turn to Bucky in surprise. He finds his heart is beating rapidly, but his smile is calm. He taps a hand on his wrist. His isn’t there, not in such a conspicuous place, but hers is. The tattoo of— “An eye for an Eye.”

The loud noises—sounds of scraping and eating, drinks sloshing in their tankards and dripping down mouths that are wiped down right after—reverberate in the background, but between the three of them, there’s a silence.

Maria holds Bucky’s gaze, scrutinizing. Bucky doesn’t stop smiling.

“What did you say your name was?” she asks.

“Yasha,” Bucky says. “Yasha Dugan. This is my husband, Jack.”

He feels Steve suck in a breath next to him and Bucky brushes his knuckles against Steve’s.

An eternity could not have stretched longer between the three of them, Maria deliberating and Steve and Bucky awaiting their sentence.

“An eye for an Eye,” Maria says finally, tapping her wrist with a finger. “There’s only one room. Give me a minute and I’ll get you the keys. I want payment up front.”

Maria turns away from them and Bucky can almost feel the breath go out of Steve in relief.

“How did you know?” he murmurs, watching Maria talk to one of the women in blue. The woman looks over at the two of them, nods, and disappears up the staircase at the end of the room.

“I saw her ink,” Bucky murmurs. “On her wrist is—bold.”

Steve snorts at that, just before Maria reappears with the key.

“Bold is one way to describe Maria Hill,” he says. “The other is gives no fucks.”

“Sky’ll take you up,” she says.

“Thank you,” Bucky says, taking the key from her. He touches his wrist again and she nods. She doesn’t look at ease, but maybe that’s just the way she is.

Before they follow the dark-haired woman up the stairs, Maria catches Steve by the wrist.

“Careful, Steve,” she says, voice loud enough for the three of them to hear, but too quiet for anyone else. “There are a lot of people watching for you two. And not all of them have eyes in the right places. If you know what I mean.”

Bucky swallows thickly and Steve nods.

“We’ll be careful,” Steve says to her. “And we’ll be gone soon.”

Maria nods at him and lets go. As they follow Sky up toward the rooms, Bucky thinks he hears her mutter once more to herself.

“Yeah, careful. If you know the meaning of the word, I’ll eat my bowtie.”  
  
  
“The last room left,” Sky says, opening the door to a room at the far end of the hall. “Lucky you.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, stepping in after her. He scans the small room once and his stomach tightens. “Lucky us.”

Steve follows behind him, stopping when he sees the problem Bucky’s already spotted.

“She thinks she’s some kinda funny,” he mutters, darkly.

Bucky moves out of the way, drops his pack on the ground.

“I’ll take the floor—” he starts, but Steve snorts.

“Don’t be self sacrificial,” he says and kicks off his shoes. “Or stupid. It’s just a bed.”

Bucky can’t help but watch the muscles of Steve’s back as the other man strips out of his dirty duster. There’s dirt clinging to the back of his neck and they both smell ripe, like sweat and grime, but that doesn’t change the facts. The facts in this case happen to be a hard body, built like a tank.

“Mind if I shower first?” Steve murmurs behind him, untucking his grimy shirt and pulling it up and over his head.

“What?” Bucky blinks. Then, catching himself, he shakes his head. “No. Go ahead.”

“Thanks,” Steve nods at him. He’s in just his dark cargo pants, his skin wind-burned and bare above. He throws his shirt on a chair and when he turns, Bucky quickly turns away. He doesn’t want to be caught staring, but it’s too late to pretend he hasn’t seen it, all over Steve’s skin.

“I’ll be back,” Steve mutters, walking past Bucky, down the hall to the bathroom.

Bucky looks down at his own hands, dirt caked under his nails, blood splatters still dried on his wrists.

It’s all over him too, at the tops of his shoulders, down his sides, crawling up and down his back—thick knots and ropes of scars. He doesn’t have to look at them much, but he can still feel them there; the marks of violence engraved into his skin.

Bucky knows who did it to him—his captors. The State. HYDRA.

Looking at Steve’s scars, he doesn’t know who carved up his coyote. But damn if Bucky doesn’t have a guess.  
  
  
Steve comes back and Bucky takes his turn, although he doesn’t strip before he gets to the bathroom. It’s not worth it to his life to let anyone else see his metal arm; that clear identification of who and what he is. He strips out of his clothes in the single stall. It’s simple, just a rusted showerhead and a drain at the bottom. The old tiles are warm against the bare bottoms of his feet, although they’re missing in places, so corners dig into his soles every time he takes a step.

There’s a grimey, used bar of soap on a little dish. Beggars can’t be choosers, so Bucky takes it, already warm and soft from Steve’s shower, and lathers himself up.

He hasn’t had a shower in he doesn’t know how many days, but the water runs black under the sheer amount of dirt that’s been caked into him. He sighs, letting the hot water run through his hair and down his back. He leans his head against the wall and watches it swirl down the drown, flecks of blood and everything else he’s carried with him for weeks now.

It’s been a long time since he’s been able to stop and let his hair down, metaphorically and literally. He runs a hand through it, wishing for shampoo, and is surprised when he finds the length of it hanging over his shoulders. He remembers making the decision to grow it long, but he hasn’t been paying attention to it, with the wind and dust burning his face every time he’s on the road. Now he can see it’s grown longer than he’s ever had it before, the ends a bit frayed, the rest of it weathered from his travels.

He runs a hand through it, his fingertips nicking the top of his shoulder as he does. There’s a knot of scars here he doesn’t remember getting, but which burns every time it’s touched. There are knots of scars everywhere. His entire body is hard, jagged, a State soldier’s plaything. He doesn’t recognize it anymore, not really, and he thinks, with a dull ache in his throat, that neither would anyone he once loved. His mother. His father. Becca.

His fingertips stop at the small wound near his pelvis, the skin pink and puckered. That one he remembers well. That was a bullet, hot and burning. It had gone straight through one side and out the other.

Bucky sighs, his hand wandering lower and he considers it, for just a second, whether it would feel good to touch himself. Just a few strokes and a release and the moments of mindless warmth he can get on his road to hell.

He decides against it eventually, not because he’s not willing, but because the water starts to run cold.

He sighs again and turns the handle to turn it off.

The last of the dirty water swirls down the drain and he runs a rough towel over himself. Once he’s dried, he slips into a pair of clean, cotton pants, one of two that Sky’d left behind for them.  
  
  
When he gets back to the room, he’s scrubbing the towel through his wet hair. Steve’s already in bed, or at least laying on top of it. He turns his head to look at Bucky as Bucky comes in and it’s both disconcerting and not displeasing to find out that Steve doesn’t wear a shirt to bed.

“Food?” Steve asks, although he looks disinclined to move anytime soon.

“Starving,” Bucky says. He throws the towel on the chair, dumps his dirty clothes in the corner, and sits on the bed with a groan. “Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Steve says with a sigh. “The springs dig into you, but it’s better than nothing.”

“The second I lay down, I’m out,” Bucky says, not allowing himself to imagine it. He’s so tired from the open road that Liberty City already feels like a distant dream.

“Your arm,” Steve says, nodding his head toward Bucky. “It okay?”

Bucky had washed the blood off and checked in the shower.

“Flesh wound,” Bucky says. “Good as new.”

He moves his flesh arm around, checking for mobility, and is relieved to find everything is working. He already has one metal arm to to drag around, he doesn’t have time for another.

“Come on,” Steve says and drags himself up. “The sooner we eat the sooner we can sleep. Gotta get up before whatever’s coming this way hits Millers’ Town.”

Bucky would protest if he had any legs to stand on. His body craves the thought of more than one night in a place with food and a roof, but his brain tells him that’s a bad idea. He’s a man on the run. And a man on the run doesn’t stop to let the rabid dogs catch up to his heels.

“All right,” Bucky says.

He makes the mistake of looking over, because Steve’s sitting at the edge of the bed, trying to gather energy to move. His bare torso is bent forward, the muscles of his abdomen rippling as he moves. There’s dark blond hair scattered across his chest. The scars are more stark from this close, long, hard lines and twists that move every time he breathes. Steve runs a hand through his hair and it flops down into his face, the long, golden strands drying in waves.

Bucky should have taken the chance in the shower when he had it, but it’s too late now.

He gets up first and shrugs a loose tunic on, something else Sky left for both of them.

“There’s water barrels out back,” Steve says. “If we pay them extra, they’ll take care of our clothes.”

Bucky nods and rifles through his pack for a few extra gold coins. He hands it over to Steve, who’s dressed by now. They kick their clothes into a pile in the corner and Steve pockets the money to slip to Sky when they go down.  
  
  
They take a seat at the far end of the long bench where two spots open up when an old man with wandering hands gets up, his hand nearly halfway up a lady’s skirt. Bucky shoots him a dirty look and Steve motions to one of the women in blue.

“Two beers and whatever you’re servin’ tonight,” he drawls, tipping his face forward in the kind of way Bucky knows works.

The woman smirks at him and takes the order and Steve draws Sky to him in the meantime. He beckons her forward and whispers into her ear. Bucky sees him slip the money into her hand.

“Starting to think you’re some kinda slick,” Bucky says once he has a beer in front of him. There’s plenty to look at and they’re surrounded by all kinds of life, buzzing in a way that’s rare these days under HYDRA, but he’s more interested in the person in front of him.

“I’ve had my days,” Steve says with a half twist of a smile.

Bucky snorts into his beer, takes a mouthful.

“Me too,” he says. “Before.”

Steve hums, taps his fingertips against the dark wood of the bench. There are gouge marks here and there, spots glossy and darkened through years of use.

“Always like that, isn’t it?” Steve asks. “Always a before. And then everything that comes after.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow and takes another mouth full of beer.

“Everything after been bad to you?” he asks.

He’s not sure what to make of Steve; this stranger who volunteered to pick him up on one side of this miserable, accursed country only to take him straight across to the other. He’s holding something close to him, that much is clear. He didn’t get those scars by himself and he knows too much to be much too new to this.

“Not everything,” Steve says. He shrugs, then takes a sip of his drink. “Guess it depends on how you look at it.”

“How do you look at it, then?” Bucky asks.

Again, Steve doesn’t say anything immediately. Then, with a gruff kind of sigh, he runs his hand through his blond scruff.

“The more you have to hold on to, the more you have to lose,” Steve says. “No matter what comes after, even if it’s okay.”

Bucky runs a finger around the mouth of his drink and looks around at them—at the people talking, laughing, even. Bucky hasn’t felt like laughing in years. But maybe that’s bad too. Maybe he’d let HYDRA take that from him before he was ready. It doesn’t feel like they’ve earned that, to rip something so fundamental from his gut.

“You lose a lot?” he asks quietly.

Steve gives out a low laugh.

“We all lose a lot, Yasha,” he says. “Even when you lose a little, you’ve given up a lot. That’s what it means to be alive in this world.”

It rings bitter to Bucky, cynical maybe, or angry, but who is Bucky to deny Steve whatever his anger might be? He has never let anyone deny him his.

“That’s true enough,” Bucky says, not pressing. “Then again, that’s just what being alive is.”

He earns a wan smile at that.

“So yeah,” Steve says. “I had my days. That’s all behind me now.”

“Why, you think they wouldn’t go to bed with you if you asked?” Bucky asks over his drink.

Steve drinks half of his beer in two gulps.

“I wouldn’t ask,” he says.

The woman in blue brings them two bowls of rice and some kind of lamb curry that smells so good it nearly brings tears to Bucky’s eyes.

They eat their dinners in silence and when they finish, they drink another mug of beer, also in silence.

Bucky wipes the back of his mouth on a hand and when he looks up, Steve’s getting up.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s go to bed.”  
  
  
When they get back to the room, Bucky’s ready to fall into the first corner he can, but there’s still the issue of—

“It’s just a bed,” Steve says again. “I’ll take the far end.”

He strips out of his shirt again and Bucky barely has the time to admire the muscles at his shoulders before Steve’s crossing the room.

Bucky almost decides to keep his shirt on before deciding he doesn’t care. They’re both so tired the most that’s gonna happen is they end up pressed into each other, snoring.

Steve’s in bed with the covers pulled up just to his waist by the time Bucky gets there.

“You run hot or somethin’?” Bucky asks, slipping into his side.

“Yeah,” Steve says with a stifled yawn. “Always burnin’ up.”

“Lucky,” Bucky says. “I’m always cold.”

He gets under the covers and pulls them up to his chin to make the point. He turns on his side, his back to Steve. The other way is too tempting. He’s too tired to fall asleep tracing the scars on Steve’s back with his eyes.

Bucky’s not expecting his less-than-forthcoming bedmate to say goodnight or anything, so he lets his eyes fall closed, lulled by the bed under his body and the warmth radiating from a person next to him. It’s been a long time since Bucky’s shared a bed, innocent or otherwise. He hasn’t had the time or the inclination, really. He wakes up screaming in the middle of the night half the time and by Bucky’s estimation, there’s no one who really deserves to wake up to that.

So maybe he should warn Steve, but Bucky’s so exhausted he barely even feels the springs digging into his back. The plates on his arm shift once, settling down for the night. He’s almost entirely gone when he feels Steve shift.

“They didn’t have to,” Steve’s voice comes, deep and quiet, as though from the depths of Bucky’s subconscious.

“What?” Bucky mutters.

“The guards,” Steve says. “They’re not under orders to shoot. They didn’t have to shoot him.”

Bucky, who’s barely holding on to consciousness, feels himself stir awake at that.

“Didn’t know you were still thinking about it,” Bucky says quietly.

After a moment, Steve grunts.

“Yeah,” he says.

He sounds as though he’s thinking about it. He sounds as though he hasn’t stopped thinking about it.

Bucky shifts onto his back.

“You didn’t seem bothered by it,” he says. “Back then. I almost lost it and you—”

“Did what I had to,” Steve says. “I’m not heartless.”

“Didn’t say you were,” Bucky says, although, admittedly, the thought had crossed his mind.

“It’s not what we needed,” Steve says, as though Bucky’s as him a question. “You come across soldiers like that and it isn’t about right or wrong, it’s about survival. They kill one person, they can kill you too. So you keep your head down and do what you need to. Don’t care about what’s happening in front of you.”

“Bullshit,” Bucky says.

“Excuse me?” Bucky can feel Steve shift so that he’s turned toward Bucky now.

Bucky, on his back, tilts his head toward the other man.

“I said, bullshit.”

“Yeah, I got ears,” Steve says. “You wanna explain what you meant?”

“You’re a whole bunch of cynical, pessimistic, whining bullshit,” Bucky says.

Steve’s face grows stormy.

“You don’t know me.”

“Maybe,” Bucky says. “But you’re here, aren’t you? You came all the way to the middle of fuckin’ nowhere and you picked me up and here we are traveling across half the goddamned universe—for what, Steve? So you can lay there and feed me some shit about how the smart thing is to let HYDRA shoot someone just so they don’t shoot you?”

“What’s the point in getting shot at?” Steve asks, a little aggressively. “Tell me. They shoot you, Barnes, they get you in the chest or in the legs or straight between the eyes and then what? Tell me who wins if you go to save some nobody and end up dead in the middle of the desert?”

“I do,” Bucky says, his blood almost boiling now. “We do. What’s the fucking point of this if at the end of the day we’re just giving each other up to the closest sniper?”

“They’re gonna kill anyway. They’re looking for an excuse,” Steve argues. “Why help them do it? Why give them one?”

Bucky turns now, facing Steve. The other man’s face is hard, his eyes furious. Bucky’s not sure if he’s actually angry or if he’s frustrated or if he’s arguing for the sake of arguing. He doesn’t know if there’s a reason Steve’s sacrificing everything to smuggle Bucky to the Citadel, but won’t sacrifice one bit more.

“Because I gotta live with myself, Steve,” Bucky says, his voice softening. “Maybe that doesn’t matter to you, but it matters to me. Who am I if I let them take my humanity from me?”

“Is there humanity left to give?” Steve asks, after a second.

“Maybe,” Bucky answers. “As long as there’s someone left to give it.”

Steve snorts at that. He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. It makes it slightly disheveled. Not a bad look altogether.

“Seems to me like we’re running out of people and humanity,” he says.

“Seems to me like you’re trying to find a reason to not care,” Bucky replies.

Maybe that’s exactly the wrong thing to say. Maybe that’s exactly what this is; Steve making himself believe it’s do or die; live and not care or care and die. Either way, Bucky doesn’t miss the flicker that crosses his face, as though Bucky’s found the heart of him.

Steve shifts and lays on his back too.

They both stare up at the ceiling, Bucky covers to his chin and Steve, covers to his waist. The bed is big enough for them both, but seems too narrow to fit the differences between them.

“Why’d you say yes?” Bucky asks, after a while. “To do this?”

Steve says nothing for long enough that Bucky thinks he’s fallen asleep. But eventually, he turns his head and Bucky can see something in the center of all of that blue.

“Thought maybe I’d believe in something for once,” he says.

Bucky swallows, trying to will down the flush that’s threatening to crawl up his skin. He feels hot, suddenly, his palm clammy. He doesn’t know about all that.

He wants to destroy HYDRA. He wants vengeance for all of the blood he’s seen spilled.

He’s not ready to be anyone’s hope, let alone someone like Steve’s. He’s not doing this to be some kind of beacon of belief.

“Your scars,” Steve says. “They’re HYDRA.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. He lets himself look then, eyes tracing down the ones on Steve’s chest. “So are yours.”

Steve says nothing for a full minute. Then he exhales and looks up at the ceiling again.

“Yeah,” he says.

It binds them, Bucky thinks, in a way. His anger and his violence and Steve’s unmovable, lack of forgiveness and faith. At the core of them both is something HYDRA has taken and something HYDRA has given.

It’s unbalanced, whatever it is. It festers in them both, growing in the poison of their blood, eating away at their minds and what’s left of their souls.

“Get some sleep,” Steve says and turns over.

“Steve,” Bucky says suddenly and Steve pauses.

“Yeah?” Steve says.

“I get nightmares sometimes,” Bucky says. “Middle of the night. Wake up screaming. Just...wanted to warn you.”

“Okay,” Steve says and nothing else.

Bucky lets his eyes drift close and he’s on the edge of sleep when he hears Steve say, quietly, almost as though he’s afraid of Bucky hearing, “Me too.”

Bucky turns onto his side, away from Steve, but he can still feel him there, a foot away, the warmth and large presence of him. He barely knows the man and he doesn’t really know if he likes him, but Steve’s next to him and he’s killed for him and that’s enough for now.

 

He wakes up to a thin stream of sunlight filtering in through the wooden slats shading the window. He groans, shifting, expecting to find a warm body next to him and find an empty bed instead.

Bucky sits up, rubs a hand over his face.

“Steve?”

The room is silent save for his own breathing. Bucky sees his clothes, freshly laundered in the corner. Steve’s sleep pants are in a pile on the ground and his shoes are gone.

Bucky groans a little, checks the chain at his neck, and drags himself to his feet.  
  
  
He makes quick work of washing his face and what’s more of a rinse than a proper shower. He ties his hair back and dresses again. He checks his pack before going downstairs.  
  
  
Bucky can hear the tell-tale sounds of the tavern, a murmur of voices that belies the early hour. He hears the clattering of forks and knives, voices raised and voices hushed, the thud of boots and heels against well-worn wooden floors.

He can smell it too, whatever the kitchen’s prepared and he’s even considering a beer before the road, when he hears the noises shift down the stairs.

Halfway down, Bucky can see half of the tavern floor. He stops, just out of sight of the doorway because he hears incongruous noises.

The ebb and flow of the rest of the room quiets to a silence that Bucky can nearly feel from where he’s hidden. The sound of whispers reach his ears, the thud of boots heavier, more militaristic than the average patron. The hair on the back of Bucky’s neck stand up. His plates shift with a quiet hiss.

“—Soldier,” a rough voice echoes near the entrance.

“—close the door?” Bucky can hear Maria answer. “You’re letting all the heat in.”

There’s rumbling and thudding feet and the sound of doors closing.

Bucky creeps further down the stairs, his jaw tight.

“Answer my question,” a man—Bucky inhales quietly, he can see the red skull and the six curved arms of the HYDRA on his chest—says.

“What was that?” Maria asks. Bucky can see her behind her counter, seemingly wiping down a glass.

Around her, everyone is frozen, eyes flickering to the doorway, the tension so thick he could cut through it with a blunt knife.

“Have you seen The Winter Soldier?” the HYDRA soldier grunts. “I won’t ask again.”

“Maybe I have,” Maria says and Bucky feels the breath go out of him. “Could tell you if I knew who the hell that was.”

Bucky swallows thickly, his eyes skittering around the room. He gauges every exit, each possible means of escaping. There are four soldiers inside, the largest one addressing Maria and the three behind him, automatic guns held in their arms. They each have the same, black face mask on, leaving only room for their eyes, which keep moving across the tavern, scouring, searching.

“He’s a fugitive,” the man says again. “A terrorist. There’s a warrant out for his arrest. He will he executed and anyone helping harbor him.”

Bucky’s mind is moving faster than he can process what’s happening in the room. His pack is upstairs, their truck out back. He can attempt to take out four State soldiers in a room of civilians and leave out the front door or he can climb back up the stairs and jump from the second story building, hoping there aren’t more soldiers waiting for him outside.

He’s about to take his chances with the second option when he catches a glimpse of gold squatting behind the bar. The soldiers can’t see him, but Bucky can.

As though sensing him, Steve looks up, catching his eyes. He puts his index finger up to his mouth, like he’s gotta tell Bucky twice.

“There’s been no Winter Soldier here,” Maria says. “Fugitive or otherwise. I got a business to run, would you mind getting the hell out?”

Bucky feels for his pockets and then nearly curses. He’s left his knives and guns upstairs.

“You’re lying,” the soldier says. “Do you know what we do to liars?”

“Ruin their businesses?” Maria asks and it’s with all of the disdain and ire she can muster. “I gave you an answer, now get the fuck out of my tavern.”

The soldier steps forward.

“Or what?” he asks, voice low and aggressive. He lets the threat hang in the air and for a moment the room is so tense, so terrified, that Bucky thinks it’s all going to snap around him.

Then Maria Hill puts down her glass.

She tilts her head and when she smiles, oh does she fucking smile.

“Or else I’ll make you.”

The HYDRA soldier barely gets his derisive laugh out before there’s clicking and clanging and four sets of guns and rifles are trained on him.

Maria has two short guns in her hands and her three ladies in blue have rifles in their arms, barrels pointed at the soldiers, aim true and deadly.

The soldiers immediately move, hands on their guns, fingers on the trigger.

“This is treason,” the HYDRA soldier spits. “You’ll be killed for this. HYDRA will find the Winter Soldier and we will hang him and you will hang with him, you and your whor—”

He doesn’t finish the word before something like a loud bang shakes the air around them.

The soldier lets out a shocked grunt and a hole appears in his head, blood splattering around him.

He falls to his knees, eyes wiped clean.

“Whoops,” Sky says. “He was getting real annoying.”

There’s just a beat of shock as the other soldiers absorb the scene and then everything descends into chaos.  
  
  
Shots ring out, gunfire and the sounds of blasting, splintering wood splitting the air. There’s shouting and there’s screaming and Bucky sees Steve grab a bottle of liquor and smash it over the head of a HYDRA soldier who avoids bullets and lunges for Sky.

“Out!” Steve shouts. “Get our shit! Get out!”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Bucky hisses and is almost up the stairs when he sees one of the soldiers near the bottom, raise his gun against Steve while he’s busy knocking the other one out.

“No you don’t,” he hisses and launches himself at him, metal arm around his neck, grappling tight as the soldier screams and tries to throw him off.

More shots blast through the air, bullets hitting wooden surfaces and shattering glasses around them. Bucky can hear Maria shouting and Steve grunting and he manages to get a better hold of the soldier he has his arm around. He rips the soldier’s mask off, covers his face with his fingers, and with the strength of his metal hand begins squeezing.

The HYDRA soldier screams louder and Bucky finally manages to grab hold of his shoulders and slam his head into the wall by the bar.

There’s a gasp and a crunching sound and his scream dies in his throat.

“Fuck,” Bucky says again, head spinning hazily, his heart drumming under his ribs, looking down, that same fear gripping him—the soldier they made him, the capacity he has for murder and destruction made clear.

The man lies at his feet and Bucky sees the blood pool under him, but he has no time to process. Steve yells at him, grabs his shoulder and nearly flings him up the stairs.

They pound toward their room and Maria and her girls take care of the rest of the soldiers left behind.

Bucky grabs his pack and Steve grabs his jacket and a few essentials and then they’re back through the tavern.

“Maria—” Steve starts, seeing her wiping blood off her mouth. She’s holding her side.

Next to her, Sky’s arm looks wrong and one of the other girls has a bullet in her abdomen.

“Go,” Maria says. “Where there’s one head, there’s others that follow. We’ll hold them off.”

“Maria,” Bucky says and she shouts, “ _Go!_ ”  
  
  
Bucky throws his pack into the seat and jumps in, Steve hurtling himself into the driver’s seat next to him.

His heart is rattling around in his chest, the adrenaline nearly burning his skin. His plates keep shifting in response to his body, hard wired in fight or flight. This was both.

He can’t calm himself down.

“They’re coming,” Bucky says, teeth nearly chattering.

“Not if I can fucking help it,” Steve growls out and hits the gas.  
  
  
They’re silent, tense as a knife’s edge for another hour, Steve driving with a great determination and Bucky looking over his shoulder every ten minutes until neither can stand it anymore.

“There’s no one there,” Bucky finally says. His jaw is sore from clenching, his shoulders aching from the tension he’s holding there. “We’re okay.”

“It’s only a matter of time,” Steve mutters. He looks over his shoulder and finds nothing, then turns at a fork in the road.

*

_oh sinners come down_  
_come gather 'round_  
_have a little fun before, they put us in the ground_  
[sinners; barns courtney](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJQTd0aoqHY)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This might be one of my favorite chapters, if I'm going to be honest with you guys. Maria Hill Be Everyone's Competent Badass Queer Girlfriend Challenge!


	4. cold spring; middle district.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky’s anger flares again and he has to hold the edge of the chipped, dirty basin, to stop from lashing out. It does him no good to hold onto something he can’t change.
> 
> The heart of the matter is that Bucky doesn’t know Steve and he doesn’t trust Steve. Maybe he doesn’t have to, maybe in this world all he can do is trust the Eyes and have faith that they wouldn’t give him a coyote who couldn’t do his job, but he’s bone tired, on a suicide mission he doesn’t expect to come back from. 
> 
> Bucky lets the water run cold and sags against the sink.

_they said our limbs cause us too much pain_  
_so they cut off my arms and they cut off my legs_  
_now I’m wandering around and i feel out of place_  
_i would like to go back to my home_

 

*

**cold spring; middle district.**

Bucky knows better than to be rattled, but it crawls under his skin, how close HYDRA had gotten. They stop for a short break a few hours later to piss and rifle through what food they have left and he’s so wound up, he punches his frustration into a tree. The trunk groans under the force of his metal hand and Steve grunts at him from over the top of the truck.

He takes a little water and splashes it over his face.

“Don’t leave clues behind, idiot,” Steve says.

“They knew where we were,” Bucky replies and the anger pricks at him again, frustration building in the pit of his stomach. “They knew where to fucking find us.”

“You leave Liberty City and there’s not a whole lot of places to go,” Steve says with a shrug, like it doesn’t matter at all. “They’re cruel, not stupid.”

“They _knew_ , Steve,” Bucky growls. He knows this without a doubt. This wasn’t logic or happenstance. HYDRA knew exactly where Steve and Bucky were going and where exactly to find them. “There’s no way that happens by coincidence—”

“So what? That change anything?” Steve asks, voice irritated now. “We run, they’ll chase us. Did you expect to get delivered to the steps of the Citadel without rabid dogs at your heels?”

“Don’t patronize me,” Bucky says, his own voice rising. He feels the guilt grip his chest like a vise. “There were people there, Steve, just fucking existing. It was Maria’s place and we came in and now HYDRA’s gonna be crawling all over them. We—”

“So what?” Steve asks again. He sounds so fucking sanctimonious Bucky could scream. “What did you expect? No, really. Is this news to you? Maria knew. I knew. You _fucking_ knew. Don’t act innocent. You taunt HYDRA and they’ll raze everyone in your fucking path.”

Bucky’s about to interrupt, his throat tight with anger, but Steve’s eyes flash, his voice growing harder.

“This isn’t some kind of glamorous hero mission, Barnes,” he glares. “You’re not gonna get a fucking gold star for doing what’s right. You sleep better at night and maybe at the end of the day you do something good, but people are going to die anyway.”

“I know what HYDRA does,” Bucky turns, nearly spitting mad.The plates on his arm shift rapidly, almost furiously. “You don’t get to fucking tell me the consequences of having a HYDRA target on your fucking _back_. I’m well fucking aware. So _fuck you_ , I know what I signed up for.”

“Then start acting like it,” Steve says. His voice is cold, his eyes are cold, and maybe that makes Bucky angrier, because after all of this, Steve can’t even fucking _pretend_ he cares.

“Fuck you,” Bucky seethes and Steve takes a step forward, then stops.

“No,” Steve says, hard. “You do this and you condemn every person you meet to death. Maybe it’s worth it and maybe it’s not, take that up with your conscience. But it’s the goddamned _reality_. There’s no room for guilt.”

It all bleeds together somewhere deep in his gut, images drumming behind his eyes, his father with a rope around his neck, his sister reaching for his hand, HYDRA sawing through his shoulder, the look on Sky’s face when the soldier snapped her arm. The man letting out a scream as Bucky put his head through a wall.

Guilt is all he has to tether his humanity to, the grinding, churning feeling in the pit of his stomach, an anxiety born of empathy. Without it, he’s just—

Bucky lets out a frustrated kind of yell and rams his fist into the tree again. This time, the tree splinters with a loud, rending crack.

“Are you fucking crazy?” Steve barks at him this time. “ _Control your goddamn anger_. You want to get your ass killed, fine, but don’t drag _me_ into it.”

Bucky is on such a tender hook he nearly snaps back, but Steve pulls himself into the truck before he can, slamming the door behind him.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Bucky yells and kicks the trunk of the tree in anger before following.

It doesn’t help and his foot aches for an hour after for the effort.  
  
  
The drive is tense and stilted, the air between them heavy with the weight of their ire. Bucky feels restless, a thick miasma of ill will and unfilled violence pressing against his chest. He knows Maria and her girls will be okay, can only believe them capable of taking care of themselves, but it doesn’t stop him from feeling cut off at the knees. He should have gone back for them. He should have stayed and killed every last fucking HYDRA soldier he saw.

Steve, for his part, says nothing, but Bucky’s begrudgingly getting better at reading him. His eyes are trained on the road, hard and flashing angry, his knuckles a tight, bright white on the steering wheel, the line of his jaw nearly straight.

It starts raining heavily halfway to wherever the fuck they’re going, water splattering across the windshield. Bucky rolls up his window and Steve turns on the wipers. They’re so old they creak as they sweep across the window and do a piss poor job of improving visibility anyway.

Bucky falls into a fitful sleep and when he wakes up, they’re driving through cornfields. It’s still raining, but the cornstalks are dry with dead husks.

Everything in this country is dry as dead husks. It doesn’t make Bucky feel any better and by the time they see a single, creaking sign for _COLD SPRING, 70 MILES_ , Bucky thinks he’s so tired and dull and angry that he might hate Steve too.

 

  
_picture: Steve at the steering wheel of the truck, angry, and Bucky looking at him, raing splattering the windows outside; fanart by witchylurker_

Steve cuts the engine in front of what amounts to an old fleabag motel at the side of the road. Cold Spring isn’t so much of a town as a cluster of old strip malls, a couple of ramshackle dive bars, a few rundown motels, and what could have been the memory of civilization, a lifetime ago.

“Going to find gas,” Steve says, the first words out of his mouth since their rest stop. Bucky doesn’t know where he’s going to find gas and frankly, he doesn’t care.

“Do whatever,” he says shortly and grabs their packs from the car. He braces himself against the rain and runs into the motel.

He gets himself and Steve the same room, despite wanting otherwise. The man at the front desk barely looks at him as he slides him the key. He’s bald and has teeth that are more brown than even yellow. Bucky tells him that he’s here with his husband and he grunts, like he’s heard it all a hundred times before. Bucky takes the key and does a quick scan of the lobby before leaving. There are no broken televisions, no phones. It’s a dank room with the one man at the desk. If any place was ever written to be forgotten, it was the Cold Spring Inn.  
  
  
The motel room itself is small, with old carpet faded and worn thin, a single, oversized bed, a single desk, and a single chair. The air is stale and smells like a hundred years of spilled liquor and illicit sex. The rain drums steadily against the roof above and there’s a leak in the corner that drips down once every few minutes, adding the rather unpleasant odor of wet mold to what is already a fairly miserable lodging. Fuck if it matters at this point.

Bucky strips out of his wet shirt and pants immediately, hanging them on the chair, wooden with gouge marks across its legs.

He’s in the bathroom, washing his face and drying himself off with a scratchy, faintly damp towel when he hears the door open and close.

Steve’s footprints are heavy as he moves around.

Bucky’s anger flares again and he has to hold the edge of the chipped, dirty basin, to stop from lashing out. It does him no good to hold onto something he can’t change.

The heart of the matter is that Bucky doesn’t know Steve and he doesn’t trust Steve. Maybe he doesn’t have to, maybe in this world all he can do is trust the Eyes and have faith that they wouldn’t give him a coyote who couldn’t do his job, but he’s bone tired, on a suicide mission he doesn’t expect to come back from.

Bucky lets the water run cold and sags against the sink.

He can’t do this without someone believing in something. It can’t be him. Most days, Bucky’s barely held together by sinews of anger and memories he wishes he could forget. Given half a chance, he’ll stutter to a standstill, just fall to his knees and let the wave of his past overcome him. What Bucky needs is someone to hold him together when he can’t do it anymore.

He doesn’t know who that person is, but he knows it isn’t Steve.

Maybe that isn’t Steve’s fault either, but then, Bucky has no one else to blame. If he’s on a one way road to death, he can only lash out against the only other person who’s there with him.

He sighs, finishes washing up, and when he enters the room again, Steve’s taking his wet boots off.

“Rain’s letting up,” Steve says, not looking at him. “We can leave in the morning.”

“Sure,” Bucky replies.

If his tone rings tense to Steve’s ear, the other man doesn’t comment. Instead, he does the same as Bucky, strips out of his wet clothes.

“Hungry?” Steve asks.

“No,” Bucky answers. It’s a lie, but he doesn’t have the energy to tell the truth. His stomach rumbles in protest and he ignores it.

Steve pauses for a second, as though hesitating, then gives a faint nod before shuffling past to the bathroom. It shuts a little too loud, the thin wood rattling in its frame.

It would be easy, so easy, to let his anger with Steve break against the shore of his exhaustion, so easy to offer an olive branch he doesn’t feel, but he ignores that too.

Instead, he takes in their situation for the night. The bed this time is barely big enough for one of them, let alone both.

Bucky takes half of the pillows and an extra blanket before throwing himself on a dry corner of the floor. By the time Steve comes back out, he’s wrapped as tightly as possible, ignoring the hunger gnawing at his stomach.

“Could’ve taken the bed,” Steve says, looking at him.

Bucky shrugs.

“Thought you got cold,” Steve tries again and, again, Bucky shrugs.

He hears Steve moving around before easing himself onto the creaking bed. After a minute of more creaking, Bucky feels a blanket land on him.

“I run hot,” Steve says, again.

Bucky grunts, unwilling to engage, but after a few minutes, does start shivering. He shifts then, rearranging the second blanket around him.

They settle into silence, although Bucky doesn’t fall asleep and he doesn’t hear Steve’s breathing even out either. They both seem suspended in their own thoughts, restless and miserable. Bucky picks at a scar on his hand, a half crescent he can’t remember getting. He thinks about the scars on his body and the scars on Steve’s body. He thinks maybe they’re both on suicide missions, in their own ways.

“I was like you once,” Steve’s voice startles Bucky out of his bitter reverie.

Bucky pauses.

“What?”

“Stupid,” Steve’s voice hardens. Bucky’s about to reply, when his voice softens. “Believed so much in something I was willing to give up everything for it. I wanted to save everyone.”

Bucky’s silent in response. Then he can’t help himself.

“What happened?”

Steve isn’t forthcoming even in the best of times and Bucky figures definitely not when they’re pissed at each other, but maybe he gets something wrong because Steve sighs.

“Everything went wrong,” Steve says. “Maybe that’s not an excuse to you and maybe it’s not one to anyone, but when you see how far you can fall, you lose perspective of everything pretty quick. Or you gain it, I don’t know.”

“Doesn’t give you an excuse to be a dick,” Bucky says after a moment.

Steve is silent, but then he sighs again.

“I know. I’m sorry.” Bucky waits and he’s rewarded for his patience when Steve starts speaking again. “I want you to succeed, Bucky. Whatever it is you’re doing. It’s gotta be better than this, what we have now. But you haven’t lost everything yet, so you think you can punch your way through, wear every feeling on your sleeve, and bend the world to what you need it to be. You think in the end, something good has to happen because something bad happening would be—is—intolerable.”

“I’m not that naïve,” Bucky mutters.

After a minute, Steve says, “I was.”

Bucky thinks about everything that could go wrong now. In a sense, it would matter more on a grander level than on a personal one. Personally, he has little left to lose other than his life, and the value of that grows smaller every day.

But if he had more? If he still had Becca? Maybe he’d care more too, about the sheer need to stay alive, at all costs.

As it is, Bucky hasn’t really felt that kind of alive in a long time.

“Thanks for earlier,” Steve says, offering some kind of olive branch. “I didn’t see that soldier coming.”

Bucky feels the crunch of the soldier’s face under his hand. Nausea rolls through him. It’s so easy to kill. Harder to live with it after. No; harder to remind himself it’s supposed to be hard.

“We got half a country to go, Steve,” Bucky says finally. “I don’t know your past and I’m not gonna ask. You don’t have to agree with me, but you have to get me where I need to go. Can you do that?”

Steve is silent for long enough that Bucky turns over.

The other man is looking up at the ceiling, as though lost.

“Yeah, Bucky,” Steve says. “I can get you where you need to go.”

The air between them shifts, grows a little less heavy. Bucky takes in a breath and feels it sink into his lungs, as though he’s been holding it this entire time.

“That’s good enough for me,” he says and turns back over. “Stop being a fucking dick too if you can help it.”

“So long as you stop being a hot-headed bonehead,” Steve says and shifts over too.

“Bonehead,” Bucky pauses. “Really?”

He can’t see the smile on Steve’s face, but he can hear it.

“Yeah, I said that,” he says.

“No promises,” Bucky yawns, shaking his head.

Steve doesn’t reply, but Bucky thinks he hears him let out a quiet breath, like a laugh.  
  
  
They pass the night without incident and share a cold breakfast of bread and cheese in the morning before leaving.

In the lobby, pasted to the window, they see a sign that wasn’t there the night before.

 **WANTED FOR TREASON** , it reads. **THE WINTER SOLDIER**.

There’s more written there, but Bucky turns away before the man in the lobby can catch another glimpse of his face.

“They’re tightening the noose,” Steve says and Bucky feels his breath come up short. “It’s an old picture of you. Blurry. Won’t stay like that forever.”

They don’t leave their names and destroy all evidence that they stopped there. It’s not foolproof, but it might buy them time. Everything is about time, now.  
  
  
The rain’s finally stopped, although the ground is soft with mud. The wheels of the truck spin around, skidding, before Bucky’s able to push it out of its self-made ditch and onto the road.

“Gotta cross the river first,” Steve says when Bucky asks him their route. “Stone Mountain’s maybe half a day after.”

Bucky unearths one of his knives to flake dried mud off of his boots.

“Is that the meeting point?” he asks and looks up at Steve.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “They know to expect us. If we don’t get there soon, there’s mechanisms.”

The Eyes triage strategy so that if one person falls, the whole system doesn’t collapse with him. This used to bother Bucky, once, but he thumbs the disc at his throat and appreciates it more now. Steve knows where they’re going, but Bucky knows what they’re doing there. Someone else—Tony, maybe, or Shuri—knows how. And the why of it all, that’s closely held by someone else entirely. A revolution is built in the details and unravels on them as well.

When the Eyes saved him, they had asked Bucky if he could live with that.

“No one holds the cards,” Natasha had told him as he flexed the joints of his new arm. “You put your whole trust in this or you don’t do anything at all. No one’s gonna blame you if you walk away, Barnes.”

Bucky, fresh off of torture, with revenge to burn, had simply opened his hand and contemplated how to take the Citadel apart, stone by stone.

“I don’t need to know everything,” Bucky had said. “I just want to be the one to do it.”  
  
  
He hasn’t changed his mind about it, either.

What he needs, to survive, is a particular kind vengeance. If at the end of this, he can douse the burning under his skin, then the Eyes can have whatever details they want.

He puts his knife away and stares out the window, eyes flickering over dead stalks of wheat and sickly yellow fields of grass, swamped at low points with mud.  
  
  
They come across the river hours later, when Bucky’s ass has fallen asleep and he’s fidgeted with the broken radio so many times that Steve’s slapped his hand away.

“I’m going to throw you out of this goddamned truck, don’t think I won’t,” Steve says.

“Some coyote you are,” Bucky grumbles, though he concedes that a small, enclosed space isn’t the best place to be shifting around anxiously.

“They said I had to smuggle you across the country, didn’t say you had to be all in one piece,” Steve says.

“Kind of pointless if I’m not in one piece,” Bucky replies and almost reaches for the radio dial again, but Steve gives him such a withering look that Bucky hastily pulls his hand back.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to do, so can’t say that for sure,” Steve says. He turns down the curve of a hill.

Ahead of them, along the side of the road, a man and a woman walk beside a horse. The horse is limping and they keep stopping to rub its side. It’s an unusual show of affection in the middle of this desolate wasteland. It catches him off guard sometimes, the way people still find ways to express love. The feeling scratches at that place just below his left ribs, like the space beneath still holds the potential to be human.

“You think HYDRA keeps us in pairs to distract us?” Bucky asks, watching the backs of the man and woman retreat. They take one side of a fork in the road and Steve drives the truck down the other. No need for strangers to meet when recognition means certain death.

Steve inclines his head, eyes flickering over to Bucky.

“It’s counterintuitive,” Bucky says. “People are more dangerous together than they are apart. Two people who are bound to each other have a lot more to fight for than someone by himself. So what is it?”

The wedding band glints on the fake flesh covering of his left hand. He flexes his fingers, watching it shift up and down.

“It’s insurance,” Steve says quietly after a minute. “I’m not trying to be an asshole this time. Two people have more to fight for, but they have more to lose too. It’s easier to break people who are willing to sacrifice themselves for someone else.”

Bucky looks at him, but Steve’s face is trained carefully blank.

“HYDRA gets you and you fight with everything you’ve got, because all you’ve got left to give them at the end of the day is your life. That might make a difference and it might not. But if HYDRA’s got you and your sweetheart? Well—what would you do?”

Bucky swallows, feeling nauseated. He hasn’t had a sweetheart in a long, long time. But he can imagine it easily. Hadn’t he almost done it once? If HYDRA had asked for Becca, Bucky would have carved his heart out of his very chest to save her.

“I’d give them anything they wanted, in exchange,” he says.

“They’re cruel,” Steve says again, quieter this time. “Not stupid.”

And that’s the worst part, isn’t it? Because all tyranny is cruel, but stupid tyranny leaves room for mistakes. Tyranny effectuated through merciless, often brilliant means, on the other hand, destroys everything that tries to stand against it.

“You sound like you know,” Bucky says softly.

He doesn’t think Steve’s going to answer him and he wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t. Steve doesn’t owe him his life story and Bucky wouldn’t ask it of him. Everyone has skeletons they would rather leave buried.

“I do,” Steve says, so quietly Bucky almost misses it.

Bucky doesn’t have to know or even like Steve to feel what he does for him. It’s not pity, really. It’s empathy, and recognition.

“I’m sorry, Steve,” Bucky says.

Steve doesn’t answer, but he does take a breath in and when he let back out, it’s shaky. Bucky almost brushes a knuckle against Steve’s hand, but he knows a simple touch won’t fix what’s broken in the other man. It’s cold comfort to be touched by someone you’re forced to be with, when the person you really want is dead.

So he leaves Steve to nurse whatever he’s holding inside and Bucky, he stares out the window, trying to push aside the dread dragging at his edges. He’s only one person and the State is a terrifying, overwhelming, brilliant monolith.

HYDRA is cruel, it’s not stupid.

So what they’re waiting for isn’t a mistake, it’s an opportunity.

The problem is making sure to exploit that opportunity before HYDRA sends their regards.  
  
  
The river stretches wide and muddy in front of them, the mighty Missouri River, brown from silt and longer than the eye can see. Bucky remembers his mother telling him about it, a long time ago, something about two explorers and their navigator, a native woman, although native to what he could never really say. Maybe she was a part of the people who were here first, before white men and HYDRA pressed their will to the land and broke it. There are none of those left anymore anyway, the native people, and Bucky couldn’t have said if they were myth altogether. He felt that way sometimes, when his mother would read him history. It never felt like something real, another time when the pulse of humanity wasn’t being throttled under the iron glove of brutality.

He presses his knuckles against his mouth and suppresses a sigh. Sometimes he wishes he could just look at a fucking river without assessing humanity’s fall.

Steve kills the engine and they park on top of a cliff, not too high, with a path that winds down through a spread of trees. From this high they can see for miles around them and what he sees makes Bucky uneasy. Or rather, what he doesn’t see makes his heart pick up.

“Steve,” he says.

“I know,” Steve replies. He’s looking out too, scanning the riverscape around them.

The river stretches all around, framed on both sides by hills of trees sloping down to the banks of dirt and gravel.

Everywhere they look there’s only river and trees and behind them, the road they came from.

In front, there’s no bridge. There’s nothing but water.  
  
  
“They must have blown it up,” Steve mutters as they take the path down. “It was here when I crossed over a few months back.”

They have no real choice. They stand on the cliff’s edge for another ten minutes, assessing and arguing, but in the end there’s no other real option. They have to pass over the Missouri to get where they need to go and to pass it, they gotta go through it. There’s no time to backtrack to Miller’s Town and find a new way through the middle country, not with HYDRA calling on every doorstep for the Winter Soldier.

So they had decided together—leave the truck, take their shit.

It’s not the most ideal plan. At some point HYDRA will find it, abandoned by the river, and they’ll know who crossed and why. Better to torch it, but Bucky had left his good canister of gasoline at home that day and anyway, soldiers would undoubtedly see the black smoke billowing over the cliffside. So it’s unavoidable, but if they have to leave something behind, they better as hell book it as far away from the scene of the crime as they can.

Bucky straps his pack on, stuffing the few remaining sandwiches, strips of dried meat, and granola bars in along with his single canteen of water. The fake marriage papers he folds and sticks in a pocket inside his jacket. They can replace food if their pack falls off, but their marriage license they need as insurance.

He checks his body for his knives and guns and by the time Steve throws the keys to the truck over the cliff and down into the tree brush, Bucky’s ready to trek down behind him.  
  
  


  
_picture: Steve and Bucky against the cliff, right before crossing the river; art by fannishlove_

The thing about crossing a river is that rivers are deep. The muddy waters of the Missouri swirl around Bucky's boots as he grits his teeth and crosses in after Steve. There's no real other choice here. They look about for boats or any sort of floating device that might help them ford the river, but all they find are large boulders and the tangled branches of trees.

"We don't have time to build a boat," Steve says, looking at a particularly thick branch and Bucky nearly snorts.

"Sure," Bucky says, stepping over a flat piece of rock and grunting as mud squelches around his boots. "Time's what's keeping us."

Steve picks up the branch, nearly as long as his arm and twice as wide, and swings his arm back, throwing it overhead and back into the river.

"I got skills you don't know about," Steve says.

"What, like javelin?" Bucky asks, dangerously close to being amused.

"You'd be surprised," Steve says with the shadow of a grin, "How far you gotta throw things sometimes."

"Shut up," Bucky says, but it's with a generous dose of amusement. "Come on."

They cross, boot over boot, into the river, finding the water shallow on one end and rising up to their knees the farther in they go. Bucky shifts the pack on his back and checks to feel for his weapons every few steps, paranoia seeping in with every push of the water.

They struggle through a few more feet before Steve stops, his breath coming out in puffs. His duster is being weighed down by the water, his own feet slipping on any rocks they find purchase on. Bucky himself is on a razor’s edge, focused as he is on protecting the papers and not falling into the river.

"This is impossible," Steve growls in frustration and Bucky is of the mind to agree. They have almost the entire width of the river left to go. This is fast turning into a frustrating, fruitless endeavor.

Steve runs a hand through his hair, pushing it back and then sighs, sliding out of his jacket. He folds it, knots it around his waist and is about to move to the next rock when Bucky lets out a sharp hiss.

"Over there," he hisses, metal fingers around Steve's wrist.

Steve looks up sharply and Bucky comes up right behind him, his shoulder pressing into Steve's own.

Up the river, coming toward them, is a large raft.

It's sizable enough for three or four men to stand on, the logs cut and strung together tightly enough to form a large, floatable rectangle. There are wooden railings framing the sides, a raised bench to sit on, and what looks like a small tarp strung across the top. It's less a raft than it is a makeshift ferry.

Someone made this ferry to cross the river. Someone happens to still be in it.

There’s nowhere to hide as the ferry floats toward them and there’s no question the person has seen them when they let out a shout.

“Hands on guns,” Steve mutters tightly, like Bucky has to be told twice.

Bucky slides his hand to the colt strapped to his waist.

“All right there?” the person—a man—shouts. He scrambles a bit with a long wooden oar, shifts the direction of the raft so it’s angled toward the two of them.

“Just trying to cross the water,” Steve says carefully. He doesn’t have a gun in his hand, but Bucky can see it strapped to his waist, just hidden by the jacket tied around. “We don’t want any trouble.”

“There used to be a bridge,” the man says loudly, floating closer. He jerks his head to a spot behind them. “Got blown to pieces recently.”

Bucky feels uneasy about that.

“How recently?” he asks and presses a warning hand to Steve’s lower back.

Steve grunts in acknowledgment.

“A day ago,” the man says, scratching his chin. “It was all of a sudden, no warning. Got travelers stranded at the top of the cliffs. Gotta go all the way around if they want to cross.”

Bucky tenses and Steve lets out a curse on his breath. They’re being tracked, cut off at the knees.

Maybe Steve’s right and it’s the natural course of crossing back over the middle country. Liberty City is on one end of a stretch of unbroken land and in the middle, slicing the country in two, is one of the longest rivers in the world. Maybe they figured wherever the Winter Soldier was going, he’d be forced to cross water. Maybe they figured he’d always find a way to come back home.

Either way, it fills him with unease that isn’t easily shaken. Bucky’s used to paranoia. Being hyper-vigilant is a way to keep alive in a pit of human vipers. But this is something else. It’s feeling seen when the only way to survive is to turn invisible. It’s being followed when you haven’t left any signs behind of where you’re going.

“Steve,” Bucky mutters, leaning in close. Steve leans back, just so, so Bucky has his ear. “If they know where we’re going then—”

Steve tenses.

“Traveling together?” the man asks, good-naturedly.

“Yes,” Steve says. “We’re married.”

“That’s nice,” the man says and his raft floats closer to them. He doesn’t seem malevolent, but spies rarely do. “I was married, once. She got taken by disease. Cancer. Now here I am.”

“Here you are,” Steve agrees.

There’s a brittle silence that stretches between them and Bucky uses it to assess—there’s one raft and one HYDRA spy standing in between them and the other side of the river. That’s an odd of two against one, and at least five firearms between them. There’s no place to hide and nothing to protect them, but he can work from Steve, disarm the man, knock him out, take the ferry and be over before he wakes up and sets off the alarm.

Bucky’s plates shift, a whirring sound filling the air.

“What did you say your names were, fellas?” the man asks. He sets the length of the oar against the side of the ferry.

“We didn’t,” Steve replies.

The water shifts around their knees, seeping into their boots. Somewhere in the distance, there’s the sound of a bird calling.

“Don’t get many people down here,” the man continues. “Usually people just go back to the road. Nothing so urgent they have to get across the water.”

“We just want to cross,” Steve says slowly. “You let us be and we let you be. No need to get anyone involved here.”

The man smiles at him, as though in confusion, but there’s a sharp caution in his eyes that Bucky recognizes. It’s a subtle, but obvious change. The man knows more than he’s willing to divulge. Perhaps in any other world that would make him an ally. In this one, predators come in human skin, palms facing up, claws hidden in plain sight.

"Who would get involved?" the man asks. His voice is unquestionably tense now, his body rigid.

"We just want to cross," Steve says, harder this time. "Let us cross."

"No," the man says and then, louder. "No, I don’t think so.”

Danger prickles under Bucky’s skin, the hairs rising on the back of his neck. Something’s not right here.

He rests his hand on Steve’s waist, his fingers crawling slowly across his lower back.

The air is so thick with suspicion there’s barely any room left to breathe.

“So you’re not letting us cross,” Steve finally says into the impregnable silence. There’s a change here too, one Bucky’s starting to recognize.

“No,” the man declares. “No I don’t think I fucking am.”

Steve’s jaw tightens. He’s had enough.

“Cut the bullshit. Did they send you?” he asks roughly. “Did they send you for us?”

“No,” the man says harshly. Bucky’s eyes flicker as the man’s hand touches his oar again. “We’re not doing this again. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice—”

Steve holds still and Bucky leans forward, pressed into Steve’s back, fingers slipping over the hilt of the colt.

"What?" Bucky says. “We’ve never met you before.”

“I met the others,” the man’s face twists into something angry and wildly defiant. “You think I don’t recognize you? I’m not stupid. You can take the bridge, but you can’t take the fucking river.”

“When I say duck,” Bucky’s mouth is on the shell of Steve’s ear. Bucky feels nearly serene, but he can feel Steve’s heart beating fast through his back. He presses into the warmth of him, hand fully on the gun.

“I don’t know who you are or what you’re talking about. And I don’t care. We don’t want your fucking river,” Steve says. And then, not looking away, he says, “But we’ll take your raft.”

“ _Duck_ ,” Bucky yells and three things happen in extremely quick succession.

First, Steve hurls himself out of the way.

Second, Bucky grasps the gun from Steve’s side, lifts it, cocks it, and shoots.

Third, the man shoves his oar in front of him with a yell. The bullet hits the middle of the oar and the wood splits to reveal something metal inside.

“Fuck!” Bucky grunts and Steve grabs him by the knees, pulls him down, toppling both of them into the water.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Bucky shouts again, bobbing under the warm, muddy water. He goes down and comes back up, spluttering.

There’s sounds in the air, the man shouting, Steve moving, the water swirling against them. The chaos of the moment is confusing and alive, the noises and confusion vibrating into his skull.

Then Bucky hears a scream that sinks cold into his blood.

That’s the fourth thing. Bucky pushes water out of his eyes just in time to see the man sway on his feet.

“ _An eye for an Eye!_ ” he shouts, sounding gutted, literally gutted.

And then he grunts and falls over into the water.  
  
  
They hear the sound of hisses as bullets hit the water around them, shells blasting into the shallow rocks.

“HYDRA,” Steve hisses.

Steve pushes away from the rocks, grabs a hold of the raft and pulls himself on top. Bucky narrowly avoids a bullet that slices into the water. He curses as he comes face to face with the dead body, pushing the bloody, wet corpse away from him. He rethinks this when a bullet nearly blasts through the end of the raft, an inch away from his arm. Cursing loudly, blood pounding in his ears, he maneuvers the body so it takes the impact of any shots while he heaves himself onto the ferry too.

“Get behind!” Steve shouts. He has his gun out, aimed in the direction of the shots. He cocks it and pulls the trigger, grunting as his arm takes the force of the recoil.

Bucky curses as he realizes Steve’s other gun slid out of his hand in the water. He doesn’t stop to mourn. He sees the soldier through the trees, at the top of the cliff, mask on, rifle in his arm.

Steve shoots again and misses.

“Fuck!” Steve grunts as a returned shot blasts through one of the railings. He tries to shoot back, but he’s a beat too slow.

Bucky sees the shot coming before Steve does. He gives a loud shout and bodychecks Steve out of the way just as the blast rends through the air. Steve goes sprawling to the logs and the bullet smashes into Bucky’s metal arm. He screams in frustration, panting from exertion, blood racing, raises his own gun and fires.  
  
  
Bucky’s never been known to miss.

The body goes slack and tumbles off the cliff, splashing into the water below.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he grinds out through gritted teeth. He tries to shake the reverberations from his metal arm off, although they shake into his torso, the seam at his shoulder jostling in sharp spikes of pain.

Chest heaving, blood in his ears, Bucky ignores it and offers Steve a hand to pull him up.

“Fuck,” Steve rasps and Bucky’s inclined to agree. “Your arm—”

“Functioning,” Bucky says and sure enough, the plates shift, clicking one by one. Tony didn’t waste his time creating an arm that would fall to a single shot. “We gotta go. There’ll be others following.”

“Bucky, are you sure—” Steve tries again, but Bucky’s too shaken to allow it.

“ _Let’s fucking go_ ,” he growls.

Steve looks at him for a beat longer, as though he wants to say something, but he must decide against it. Instead, he lets out an exhale and slides his gun back into the strap at his waist. It's wet, but so is almost everything on him.

Bucky bends down to pick up the remaining oar. He tests his arms, gliding the oar through the water once.

"Want me to?" Steve asks.

"No," Bucky says. "It's fine."

And it is, mostly. His metal arm seems to be working as intending, even if the plates are hissing and shifting more frequently than normal. His flesh arm is a little stiff, tense from the recoil of the gun, his shoulders and jaw tight from the spike of adrenaline, the danger still heavy in the air.

Where there's one head, there's more. They have to move and they have to move now.

"I'll drop the extra weight off the raft so we move faster," Steve says, moving as quickly as he can.

Bucky, whose mind is filled with the whirring of his arm and the rapid, tight thudding in his chest, just grunts. He starts moving the oar through the water, one stroke after another. There's something about the rhythm that eventually begins to calm his blood pressure, the tense nerves in his body easing, slightly, with each foot they move forward.

They make fast enough work of it, Steve standing guard behind Bucky, watching for other soldiers, his gun and Bucky's gun in his hands. They're down one gun, which Bucky now has room to regret. It had been a mistake to let go of it in the water, which he thinks about with frustration. They don't have the time or the space to allow mistakes. Not with HYDRA at their backs, shooting first and asking questions later.

Bucky’s eyes move over the bank on the far side of the river as they approach it. He takes a hand off the oar for a split second, just to make sure the chain is still there, the disk secure at his neck.

He doesn’t realize he’s shaking until Steve pulls him back into himself.

"Bucky," Steve's voice cuts through the brambles of his mind.

Bucky looks over at him questioningly. Steve's still watching the trees behind them, his expression unreadable. Bucky would never say that Steve has a softness to him, but there's something there that he can't put his finger on. It's not regret, really. It's closer to resignation.

"That man was an Eye," Steve says finally. His voice is quiet, soft on the gentle breeze of the Missouri River. "Wasn't he?"

Bucky lets out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. He had realized it too, a second too late, the moment the sniper shot hit the man's back. _An eye for an Eye_ , he had shouted, and it had made sense too late to save him.

"Yeah," Bucky says. "I think he was."

Bucky hears Steve let out an exhale. He wonders if Steve feels it too, the dull feeling in his gut, like everything is too heavy to bear a moment longer.

"There's no way of knowing who they came for," Steve says after a minute. "Us or him. Or maybe they just saw three guys on a river and thought, well, who's going to stop me?"

It's hard to tell, in this world, what's agenda and what's cruelty. State propaganda is spread by cruelty and it encourages cruelty, but the two aren't synonymous. Sometimes, people are just mean to be mean. Sometimes, soldiers kill just to kill.

"Either way, they got what they wanted," Bucky says. He's used to training his voice steady, but he's almost too shaken to manage it this time. He thinks he sounds as unbalanced as he feels. "They don't care which rebel they kill, as long as they kill one."

Steve doesn't say anything, but he's makes a quiet humming noise, as though he agrees. It's hard not to. HYDRA has a hit list the entire continent long. This is what they do—they oppress everyone systematically, across the whole country, and where they see pockets of rebellion, they turn people against one another, give them just enough authority to police the shit out of each other, and where all of that fails, well, they just come in with their list of people who are more trouble alive than dead and find a way to make them dead.

Bucky knows some of the list by heart—Jacques Dernier. Dum Dum Dugan. James Falsworth. Scott Lang. Hank Pym. Hope Pym.

He’s been on that list for a long, long time. Now they’re just waiting to cross it off.

He doesn't know who this person was, but he hopes he's with his God, wherever that might be, if that even might be. Bucky hasn't believed in God for a very long time, but he hopes it for the people HYDRA have taken. He hopes it for the people who are left behind, those who need some kind of protection when all things are ending.

He doesn't hope it for himself, though. For himself, Bucky has no hope at all.  
  
  
The raft gently abuts the bank and Steve breaks the oar against his thigh.

"Don't need anyone coming after us," Steve says.

He and Bucky step onto the mud of the bank and, together, heave the raft off the side and into the water again.

Bucky watches it float away slowly, on the surprising calm of the river. Across, he thinks he sees a body floating among the brown, but he blinks and then it's gone.

"Come on," he says tiredly, turning away.

He doesn't take a step before he feels a large and calloused hand close around his wrist. He turns and Steve is looking at him. He's wet, dripping from the chest down, his duster soaked, his shirt clinging to him.

"Hey," Steve says.

"What?" Bucky asks and it comes out meaner than he means it to. He's just—tired. He's paranoid and sad and tired.

"Thank you," Steve says. "For saving me back there."

Whatever Bucky had been expecting, it wasn't that.

"Oh," he says. He watches Steve for a moment and Steve doesn't let go. "Yeah. No problem."

"I know you don't like me, but I appreciate it," Steve says.

Bucky takes a moment to collect himself and shakes his head.

"I don't hate you, Steve," Bucky says. "I just don't know you."

Which he thinks, is fair enough. Steve has given him a few half sentences here, a scowl there, but what Bucky knows about him is only guesswork. He doesn't know Steve Rogers and, he supposes, Steve Rogers doesn't know him.

They don't have to know each other for this to work, but he thinks it would be easier. It would be easier to shoulder this, count the dead bodies at their feet, if they could learn to lean on one another.

"Okay," Steve says quietly.

He holds onto Bucky for a beat longer, his thumb grazing against Bucky's wrist, a pressure on his pulse point. Bucky feels it ripple through him despite himself, a warmth crawling up his arm.

When Steve lets go, Bucky feels somewhat askew, like an anchor's been cut from him. He turns, unsteady on his feet, and starts walking through the brush, trying to find the path to climb their way up the other side.

Another person dead, he thinks wearily.

And another step closer.

*

_i told you i told you_  
_i have nothing left with which to hold you_  
_i lean up against you_  
_we need heat where we’re gonna go_  
[beat & weathered / one hundred years; typhoon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6tgvVs32XI)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Infamous River Scene (familiar to anyone on Twitter) wasn't as bad as I thought it was?? It WAS, however, a bitch to write. Never write yourself into a river if you don't have a way to cross it, my friends. A word to the wise.
> 
> Also, how beautiful is this art from witchylurker? Leave her some love [on Twitter](https://twitter.com/witchylurker?lang=en) if you have one!


	5. stone mountain; middle district.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky stares at him, maybe a little bug-eyed, maybe slightly more than necessary, but then he can't stop the grin that spills across his features too.
> 
> "You got human emotions hidden under all that scruff, Rogers?" he asks.
> 
> "Human emotions?" Steve asks, running a hand thoughtfully through said scruff. "Never heard of them."

_interchanging mind control_  
_come let the revolution take its toll if you could_  
_flick a switch and open your third eye, you'd see that_  
_we should never be afraid to die_

 

*

**stone mountain; the middle district.**

Stone Mountain isn't too far from the river, by their estimation, but they also don't have a truck anymore to take them across the flat, wide landscape. Luckily for Bucky, Steve has the internal compass of a hawk and luckily for Steve, Bucky doesn't mind sleeping on the ground, against trees, in the middle of fields of wheat.

They take stock of themselves once they've put enough distance between them and the river. It’s slow going, but necessity moves their feet when all of their nerves have begun to fray.

“Here,” Steve says, his feet coming to a sudden halt after a few hours. He has a good two inches on Bucky and maybe ten or twenty pounds of muscle besides, but he seems to be swaying on his feet. He sounds as exhausted as Bucky feels.

“Middle of wheat is as good as anywhere,” Bucky agrees and lets his damp pack down.

They're down to three guns, but Bucky's only lost one knife. Both of their packs fell into the water with them, so the sandwiches are ruined, but the granola bars and jerky are fine, so long as they're willing to use some of their little remaining water to wash them off. Bucky takes out a granola bar and tosses it to Steve, who catches it wordlessly, his head inclined slightly in thanks.

"No injuries?" Steve asks, uncapping his canteen and splashing some water onto his face.

"No," Bucky says, taking account of himself. "You?"

Steve shakes his head and then unwraps the duster from around his waist. It's still soaking wet, the fold filled with silt. He sighs and lays it in the grass before easing himself down next to them.

"Papers are mostly fucked," Bucky says, frowning and pulling their fake marriage papers out of the inside pocket of his jacket.

"We're not getting through any checkpoints now anyway," Steve says. He runs a hand through his hair and it falls back, as though he's combed it over, blond glinting in the midday sun. There's definitely silt there too, the ends a bit muddy, but it still looks unreasonably good.

In comparison, Bucky probably looks like a drowned otter. He pulls his wet shirt away from his chest, but it squelches back a second later. He'll have to count on the grace of the sun and the midday heat before anything on his body becomes bearable again.

"Got the wedding ring though," Steve says after a moment and flashes his left hand toward Bucky.

Bucky stares at it for a second, the silver nearly glowing against Steve's hand, streaked brown with dried mud and dirt, and then lets out a puff of laughter.

"Who could doubt our love after this?" he asks. “Two fucking idiots nearly lose their lives and limbs in the Muddy Missouri, but Lord help them, they’ll keep the wedding bands.”

Steve, well—

"Are you smiling?" Bucky asks, with a near-horrified slow blink.

"What?" Steve says, expression immediately growing stony again. "No."

"Wow," Bucky says, a little louder. "Holy shit. I didn't think I hit my head that hard against the raft."

"I don't know how to smile," Steve says, his mouth twitching. "Where would I start?"

Bucky stares at him, maybe a little bug-eyed, maybe slightly more than necessary, but then he can't stop the grin that spills across his features too.

"You got human emotions hidden under all that scruff, Rogers?" he asks.

"Human emotions?" Steve asks, running a hand thoughtfully through said scruff. "Never heard of them."

Bucky snorts and then laughs and then sits down on the grass next to Steve and his goddamned duster.

"I can't stand you," Bucky grumbles, but it's lighter than it has any right to be. His grin fades away to a smudge of a smile. He stretches his legs out in front of him and lifts his left hand in front of his face, where they can both see. "So this is true love, huh?"

"Seems like it," Steve answers, looking with Bucky. After a moment during which Bucky can almost feel the hesitation rolling off of his massive shoulders, Steve nudges him with his own.

"What is it?" Bucky snipes, good naturedly. "If you're about to tell me I smell like the bottom of a fuckin' river, I gotta tell you, you're wasting your time, pal. I know I reek."

"You ever think I like that mud and river smell?" Steve asks. "Gets me real hot-blooded. Maybe that's the entire reason I married you."

Bucky turns to look at Steve, stares at him square in the eyes and shoves a finger against his chest.

"I'm no blushing maiden, Rogers," Bucky says. "I know you married me for three things."  
  
  
Steve blinks at him and almost controls his mouth, but fails to stop a corner from twitching up in amusement.

"What's that?"

"First, I'm a great fuckin' shot," Bucky says. "What was that back there? You wouldn't have hit a bear two feet in front of you."

"Hey," Steve protests, but Bucky jabs him in the chest again.

"Don’t argue. My Nonna, Lord rest her soul, could’ve shot better. Second, who else is gonna put up with your jaded, wounded, faux cynic ass?" Bucky asks.

"That's uncalled for," Steve growls, without any sort of heat. “Nothing about my cynicism is faux.”

"You’re so fucking annoying,” Bucky replies. “Seriously though, you're hot, but you're depressing as hell. Just once, crack a joke or something.”

"You think I'm hot?" is what Steve takes away from that.

Bucky snorts and leans back on both of his hands.

"So what's the third?" Steve asks. He rubs his hands into the grass, as though that'll help clear off some of the dried river water. “I’d like to know all the reasons I’m illegally bound to a bleeding hearted dumbass like you.”

"Third," Bucky says with a slow, shit-eating grin. "I have a _remarkable_ ass."

Steve doesn't quite choke, but he does let out an unusual strangled kind of sound, somewhere in between a swallow and a laugh.

"That so?" he manages and Bucky smirks.

"Yeah," he says. He doesn’t have the energy to show Steve his best asset because he’s sitting, but he tries to wiggle it under him anyway. Steve looks down at the movement, which is all according to Bucky’s plan. "Best ass in three districts. Fun fact, HYDRA's actually after me because they're so jealous of my derriere."

“How’s that?” Steve sounds like he doesn’t really want to know, but can’t help but asking.

“Have you ever seen a State soldier with a good rump?” Bucky asks Steve, dead serious. “Their asses are flat and they’re mad about it.”

“That wasn’t on the wanted poster,” Steve says, voice clearly cracking.

“It was all of the Russian bits,” Bucky says with an exaggerated wink.

Steve can't help it this time, his face crumples into what is undeniably a laugh.

"Fuck," Bucky says with a grin, pleased with himself. "So all it takes is talking about ass."

Steve covers his face with a hand and Bucky's not ashamed to admit to himself that it's not the worst sight he's seen, Steve's large fingers curving over the dirty blond scruff on his face. His shoulders shake and he's not only smiling, he's laughing.

"Fuck," Steve says finally, his voice lighter than it has been in all of the time Bucky's known him. He tilts his head back and Bucky's eyes trace over his exposed throat. "Maybe it has been a while."

“How long’s that?” Bucky asks.

“You think I’m gonna tell my fake husband the last time I got laid?” Steve looks at him, almost lazily.

“Yeah, pal,” Bucky says, equally lazily. “That’s what marriage is. Telling your spouse the last time you fucked someone else.”

Steve laughs at that again, which again makes Bucky more pleased than he’s willing to admit.

“A long time, Buck,” Steve says.

Bucky tilts his head at the nickname in surprise.

“It’s the end of the world,” Steve says with a half-smile. “No time for more than one syllable names.”

“That’s lazy,” Bucky informs him. ”This is why you’re not getting fucked.”

“Thought that’s what a husband was for,” Steve tries.

Bucky snorts at that and then, dramatically, lets himself fall flat onto his back.

"Maybe once you stop smelling like the bottom of a river," he smirks.

Next to him, Steve lets out another bark of laughter. He shoves at Bucky's side.

"Ass," Steve says and Bucky grins.

"Yep," he says. "Best one. In three districts."

Steve lowers himself onto his back too and they lay in the grass for another half an hour, half-dozing, half staring above them, talking drowsily when the feeling takes them. It’s the first real moment either of them have had a chance to catch their breaths since they met and they take it, faces turned up toward the sun, eyes closed, not thinking, for just one minute, about the death warrant hanging about their shoulders.  
  
  
Staying still anywhere too long is far too dangerous, so the minute their clothes are only passingly damp, they leave. They cut through more wheatfields than Bucky has seen in his entire life, Steve's internal compass guiding them along side roads and streams in the direction they presumably need to go. Bucky himself is more or less useless in that regard, although he's a better shot than Steve when they need food. They eventually get hungry, after the granola bars run out and Bucky can hear Steve's stomach protesting as they shove stalks of wheat aside and clomp through soft ground.

Bucky doesn't need to waste a bullet to kill, so when he spears a rabbit with nothing but his knife, Steve looks at him with something bordering on astonishment.

"I told you," Bucky says, with a grin. "You couldn't shoot someone two feet in front of you. Leave the hunting to me."

"I was distracted," Steve grumbles. "Any other time I coulda had him."

"Yeah, sure," Bucky says and retrieves his knife from their dinner. He picks up the dead rabbit with a slight wince. He hates this part. "You wanna skin him?"

"Nope," Steve says, asshole that he is. "You seem to be handling everything here. I'll get wood for a fire."

Bucky scowls, but he sets about his work with the grim determination of someone who has too much muscle and weighs too much to be sustained on two meager granola bars. His stomach grumbles as he skins and cleans the rabbit and by the time Steve comes back to assemble their makeshift spit, Bucky's stomach is grumbling.

"Here," Steve says, offering Bucky some washed beef jerky while he skewers the rabbit. It won't be much for the two of them, but it'll be enough to get them to base of Stone Mountain. And then—

"Thanks," Bucky says, gratefully. He chews on the tough meat while watching the rabbit turn a golden brown. The fat sizzles on the spit, drops into the fire, hissing as it does so. His stomach grumbles even as he shoves more jerky in his mouth.

"We need to find a faster way of getting there," Steve says, as though reading Bucky's mind. "I saw a marker a few miles back. We're a few hours away from the mountain by something on wheels. Walking, it'll take us days."

With HYDRA crawling all over the middle country looking for the Winter Soldier, they'll be lucky to shake them off their heels for a day or two. They don't have days to sacrifice to walking through old farmlands.

"Farms," Bucky says, watching Steve take the rabbit off the spit. "I saw some a ways back. We gotta break into one."

"Yeah," Steve says. He hands the whole skewer to Bucky, who takes out one of his knives to saw through it, split it in half for both of them. "You up for it?"

"You asking me to break into a farm and steal us a car, Rogers?" Bucky asks. He hands half of the rabbit back to Steve. The firelight reflects in his blue eyes, the bright yellow, almost white, pooling near his irises.

Steve takes the offering with his mouth curving into a slow smile.

"Hear you have some kind of a record with breaking and entering," he says.

"And arson," Bucky says, returning a lopsided smile. "Some explosions. Destruction of property. Theft of property, probably."

"You ever think you’re the problem?" Steve says. He holds his dinner close to him. "Thanks."

"Nope. Just imagine it's—" Bucky starts and stops. "What's your favorite food?"

Steve quirks an eyebrow at him and then looks down at his hand. He looks as though it's been a long time since anyone has asked him his favorite anything, which Bucky can relate to. He settles next to him on a log, the grease from the rabbit running down his hands.

"When I was younger," Steve says slowly, after a minute of contemplation. "My Ma used to make this chicken pot pie. I...hated everything that was in it, technically. Peas, cooked carrots, even gravy."

"You don't like gravy?" Bucky asks, making a face. "Who doesn't like gravy?"

"It's gross," Steve says. He turns the skewer over in his hand. "It's a texture thing—anyway, the pot pie had all of those things in it. I was positive I'd hate it. I was...determined to hate it. She made it once a week my entire childhood and I would throw a tantrum every time she tried to offer it to me."

Bucky can't help but smile at that. He tries to imagine Steve, younger, form a picture of this man who's so serious and hurt now. He can't fully imagine it, but then Steve keeps talking.

"I was kind of a brat, I guess," he chuckles. "A bit of a temper, stubborn enough—"

"No shit," Bucky says, feigning shock and Steve shoots him a half-hearted glare. Bucky grins at him.

"I said stubborn _enough_. Anyway, I threw a tantrum every goddamn time, but my Ma, she was—" Steve's voice catches low and Bucky can almost see something there, a glimpse of a crack in the stone. "—patient, beyond what I deserved. So one day she comes home from work and she's tired, her feet are sore, she’s been fighting a cough for two weeks, she's just learned that HYDRA's shutting the clinic down. She's been pulling double shifts, running home to care for me, and out of a job. And she, well, she just had it with me."

Bucky's smile falters. He takes a small bite of the rapidly cooling meat. It's cooked through perfectly, if gamey, no seasoning at all.

"She took me by the shoulders, serious as I’d ever seen her, and told me then that sometimes we have to do things we don't want to, life's not always going to be what we expect it or want it to be," Steve says.

"Heavy for a kid," Bucky says, as though he hadn't learned the same thing as a child himself. He remembers being ten years old, skinning his knees at the park, seeing HYDRA soldiers slam a man to the ground for having the audacity to be poor.

"I needed to be talked to like that," Steve says, looking at Bucky seriously. "But it wasn't that. I think it was the look in her eyes, like she was so desperate to take care of me and couldn't. Broke my fucking heart. I think I was eight, maybe nine years old."

Bucky makes a sympathetic noise.

"So, the pot pie?" Bucky asks, nudging Steve's thigh with his knee.

A smile flickers across Steve's sad face. He takes a bite of the rabbit.

"Ate it that night," Steve says. "Ate it every night she made it after that. Took me a long time to realize it wasn't that she was crazy about it either, it was just the easiest to make and it kept well in the fridge. Hearty, kept me full for hours."

Bucky licks some grease off his fingers.

"So it was good? Your favorite meal?"

At that, Steve laughs, almost heartily. The sound startles Bucky and he stares at Steve, who grins at him apologetically and shakes his head.

"God no," he says. "I hated it. I mean the crust and the chicken were fine, but I kind of wanted to die every time I had to eat it. But it made Ma happy and that's all that mattered to me, really."

It's so unexpectedly sweet from a man Bucky's only seen gruff behavior from that he can't stop the warmth from pooling in his stomach.

"You dumbass," Bucky complains, hiding a smile behind another bite of rabbit. "What the fuck is your favorite food then? I was trying to make a point and here you are waxing poetic about chicken pot pie."

Steve grins again and finishes off half of his rabbit in two bites.

"Pizza," he says.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Bucky ogles at him and Steve shrugs.

"I miss melted cheese," he says.

"You're a goddamned idiot," Bucky declares. "Fucking melted cheese. Just imagine it's pizza then."

"Mm, tomato sauce," Steve says, finishing the rest of his meager meal. He licks the grease from his fingers, which Bucky pointedly does not watch, although he can feel the movement in his gut. He can hear the sound of Steve's fingers popping in and out of his mouth and it's enough to drive him fucking crazy.

"I'm gonna leave you behind in the farm," Bucky grumbles.

He finishes up his own meal, throws the skewer into the fire and then wipes his greasy hands in the grass.

The moon is high in the sky by now, the night settling dark around them.

"I'll take first watch," Steve says, smothering out the fire. "Get some sleep."

Bucky watches the embers dwindle under clods of dirt. He lays down in the grass, wrapping his jacket over himself for a bit of warmth.

He thinks about what Steve's said, the warmth and loss in his voice. Bucky knows what it feels like to lose a parent. He's lost both and it still cuts into him on cold nights and warm, the aching, unforgettable knowledge that they're gone and nothing will bring them back. It's a blackness he can't shake, a vise around his chest that never loosens, whether or not he acknowledges it. He wonders what it could have meant, for Steve, and for him, if they were in a different kind of place, in the middle of a different kind of story. He wonders what Steve's life would have been like, if HYDRA hadn't taken it from him. He can imagine Steve’s mouth curved up into a smile now and he wonders if in another life, it wouldn’t reach his eyes too.

Eventually the exhaustion creeps past the edges of his consciousness, his thoughts slowing to a slow crawl. He falls asleep to the soft, low sound of Steve humming something he doesn't quite recognize. It curls into his dreamscape and stays there with him.  
  
  
Bucky doesn't have the same internal map that Steve has playing out in his head, but he's familiar with the rough geography of the country. Stone Mountain is somewhere in the Middle District, a little bit past the halfway point to the District. It doesn't make Bucky anxious to realize they've crossed half of their journey. If anything, it brings his purpose more into focus, makes him mask his footsteps as they step around the corner of the abandoned farm.

They've been surveilling the farmhouse for an hour or so now, watching for movements inside and out. They can't rule out HYDRA spies, soldiers stationed at outposts to catch unguarded travelers, but there's also the possibility that they'll knock into a poor couple, running a dying farm as a last resort.

"There's no one there," Bucky says quietly into Steve's ear and Steve nods, lets Bucky take the lead this time.

Steve might be good at navigating, smuggling, and close range combat, but Bucky's excellent at breaking into places and taking what he wants to take.

"Stay behind me," Bucky says. "Guard my back. I'll look through, see if there's any food. You ever hotwire a vehicle?"

"No," Steve says bluntly.

"Useless," Bucky grins. "Okay, I'll do that too. You...shoot anyone who looks like he wants to shoot me. Deal? Don't make any noise."

"I'm quiet," Steve grumbles, but he agrees to his official job of looking pretty and shooting when necessary.

The two of them creep around the side of the barn. There's a lock on it that Bucky makes easy work of, crushing it between his metal fingers. The lock breaks away and he tosses it into the grass. He opens the barn door just a crack and looks inside.

It's pitch black and he waits for any kind of movement, but none comes. Slowly, quietly, he opens the door and slips in.  
  
  
All in all, it's anticlimactic in a way that Bucky appreciates. There's only one time that the two of them grit their teeth, movement startling them, but it's just a black cat that looks at them with large, hungry eyes. Bucky roves through the stores of grains and dried foods while Steve bends down, tries to find something to give to the cat.

Bucky comes back, pack filled with food and dragging another sack of food besides.

"Be useful and use your man muscles to carry some of this," he grunts and Steve raises an eyebrow, gets up from the cat. He's found her some corn that she's eating hungrily.

Bucky abandons the food stores to Steve and breaks back into the side of the barn with the heavier equipment. He sees something that looks like a rusted old tractor, a wagon with two wheels missing, empty horseshoes, and—something large covered in a dusty tarp.

Bucky picks up a corner, eyes glinting, and lets out a pleased hiss.

"That'll do," he says, uncovering it the rest of the way with a smug grin.  
  
  
"Find something for us?" Steve asks, pack and food bags in his arms when Bucky comes back.

Bucky smirks. Behind him, from the other room, there's the sound of a quiet rumbling.

Steve gives Bucky a discerning look, but when he pushes the door open, he can't hide the breath that's punched out of him.

"Oh," he says.

"You look like a guy who knows how to ride a bike," Bucky says.

Steve's eyes trace the dulled chrome and cracked leather of the wide motorcycle. It's not new by any means, but it's big and it'll definitely get them where they need to go.

"You're not wrong about that," Steve says and for the first time since Bucky's known him he sounds almost pleased. "You're not wrong about that at all."

After so many days on their feet, there's something freeing and reckless about climbing onto a motorcycle behind Steve.

"You ever ride before?" Steve asks.

"Sure," Bucky remarks. "Got a bike for my sixteenth birthday. That was after HYDRA gave my family an estate, but before they shot my parents in front of me."

"Sometimes, less is more," Steve says. He swings himself onto the bike, leaving just enough room for Bucky to slide in behind him.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Bucky asks. He makes sure their packs and bags are strapped on tight and leans into Steve, arms around his waist.

"You talk a lot," Steve says.

"That's how you get to know a person, jackass," Bucky gripes. "Suck my dick and my trauma."

"Maybe later, if you're good for me," Steve replies smugly, like the asshole he is. "Try not to fall off."

Bucky scowls and makes sure to lock his arms tight. His knees press against Steve's hips, their body heat bleeding into each other.

"Gonna cut off your circulation before you get to my dick," he mutters. His chin is sitting on the curve of Steve's upper back, his nose nearly buried in Steve's hair.

Despite how filthy they both are, despite the river water and the mud and the sweat dried across their skin, Steve still smells unexpectedly good. Bucky can't tell if it's his natural musk, something deep and earthy, like fresh soil and wood on a rainy day, or if Bucky just hasn't been around another man in a while. Either way, it distracts him from his glowering.

"You still talking about your dick?" Steve asks.

"You still thinking about my dick?" Bucky retorts.  
  
  
"Little bit," Steve replies and Bucky's beginning to think he had him pegged wrong this whole time. Maybe Steve Rogers is a bit of a taciturn, jaded cynic, but that seems to be only so long as he has nothing to say. Given half the chance, he's a bit of a smartass and a total, well, dick, to boot. Bucky's had about enough of him.

Which is to say, he pinches Steve's stomach in retaliation and somehow discovers there's nothing to pinch except for hard muscle. Jesus fucking Christ.

"Get us to Stone Mountain and I'll blow _you_ ," Bucky grumbles.

"Now sugar," Steve says and Bucky can definitely feel his shit-eating grin, even if he can't see it. "All you had to do was ask."

Bucky doesn't have the chance to point out how lacking Steve's attempt at dirty flirting is before a rumbling vibrates up his legs and his ass, moving through his chest, to the tip of his throat. Steve starts the engine, closes the choke, and opens the throttle.

They peel out of the abandoned farmhouse, making for Stone Mountain.  
  
  
They make good time, Steve only showboating a little as they cut through dirt roads and what used to be open highways, now fallen into concrete disrepair. The warm air cascades around them and once Bucky stops worrying his gun and knives will slip out, he enjoys the motion of it all, the miles sliding away under their feet.

The moon drifts through the sky as Steve drives and only once or twice does Bucky try to move forward, lean more heavily against Steve's back so that he can tell him something or ask a question. The wind whistles through their ears just loud enough that Steve can only make out every other word, so Bucky stops trying after a while and lets his mind settle into the kind of peaceful quiet he only gets when he wipes himself clean.

After a while he can feel his back start to hurt and his arms start to get stiff, but Steve doesn't stop, so he doesn't ask him to. Instead, they drive on in silence, Steve watching the road ahead of them with grim, single-minded determination and Bucky drifting along behind him, body tucked close, feeling every muscle rippling and shifting through Steve's back.

If he doesn't feel completely safe and at peace, then he at least feels calm, for the moment, his heart racing only in time with Steve's, which he can feel through the back of his shirt, in tune with each other, for once, Bucky's disbelief and distrust suspended so long as Steve can drive a motorcycle.  
  
  
Stone Mountain is a city built on a hill. The entire thing is a bit of a misnomer as far as mountains go, although Bucky's unsure what a mountain would be made of otherwise and he makes his questioning and skepticism known. Steve tells him tiredly to shut up and get off the bike, which Bucky does gladly.

He tries to take a few steps and his legs are so stiff and shake so badly that he nearly falls to his knees, wobbling like a baby foal attempting to understand balance for the first time. His arms are nearly frozen in place too; he looks like he's still trying to hold someone or attempting some kind of terrible dance.

Once Bucky's body stops shaking, he looks up at the city before them. It's not built into stone, but there are stone houses, buildings that once were high enough to scrape the sky, now mostly worn down. Stone Mountain is a city as far as cities go in this new world. It's old and crumbling and there's something sad and destitute about it, but there are more buildings and people than in the smaller towns littering the landscape out West. They look more tired and hungrier than the people left behind in Liberty City or Miller's Town, and greyer too, as though there isn't much living to be had in a city in the middle of a hill in the middle of the country. Bucky supposes they might be right about all that.

"Everyone's staring at us," he mutters as Steve kills the engine.

There aren't that many people out in the streets, but there are enough to be a problem. Eyes flicker toward them and just as quickly flicker away. They never catch on them is the thing, as though Steve and Bucky are a part of the scenery, pretty and easily forgotten.

"Best anonymity's in a city," Steve says. "People are looking, but they're too tired to be watching. They got better things to be doing, like trying not to die.This way."

That doesn't sound particularly reassuring to Bucky, but he tears his eyes away from an old woman on the stoop of a wooden house with a crack nearly splitting its foundation. She looks like a grey smudge herself, old, and tired. If Bucky sticks his thumb out, he could rub her away entirely. He thinks maybe that's what it would have been like for him too, if his parents hadn't died. He would have picked Becca up in his arms, moved all of them to a city at the foot of some hills, left to be worn to the bone and forgotten, but alive at least and healthy.

Too late, he sees a girl who reminds him of her, all brown hair and dimple in her chin, the one that matches his. She would be older than that now, but it's the last time he saw her, her lower lips trembling, the only sign of weakness she'd show even on the cusp of being abandoned. But that was years ago. Now she's all grown up, somewhere else and he's here, an albatross around his neck, too stupid to have any sense at all. He tears his eyes away from the girl, trying not to stagger from the weight of his grief. He wonders where Becca is now. He wonders if she’ll miss him when he’s gone.

“Just up this hill,” Steve says and Bucky follows him, emotion clogging his throat, memories threatening to spill out of that place he keeps locked tight.

Luckily Steve really does stop at the top of the hill and Bucky’s distracted by nearly running into his brick wall of a back. Ahead of them, Steve’s staring at a cement cube of a building with shuttered windows and a CONDEMNED sign hanging askew across its front.

"Seems a bit...obvious," Bucky says quietly, looking up at the grey block of a building. "Always thought a safe house would be less I don't know, obtrusive."

"You ever kick a hornet's nest?" Steve asks. He kicks the stand down, looks up at the cube.

"No," Bucky says. "I'm not an idiot."

"Yeah," Steve says. "Exactly."

The analogy doesn't track perfectly, but it makes enough sense. Maybe the best place to hide is out in the fucking open. State soldiers are self-preserving little fucks anyway. Why would they go into a condemned building? Nothing to torture inside if all of the people are somewhere else.

"Listen," Steve says, stopping short at the side of the building.

Bucky nearly runs into him _again_ , but catches a hand on Steve's shoulder at the last moment.

"We get in, then we get out," he says. "Things have changed since Liberty City. HYDRA’s crawling everywhere now, Bucky. We stay too long and they'll find us again."

The thought of resting is so tempting that Bucky knows they can't do it. His muscles ache with exhaustion, the adrenaline of the river firefight long drained away to leave behind something dull and cold. He doesn't stagger with his steps, but the hesitation is in his limbs, his body dragging if he stops to think about it.

"If we stop, I might never get back up," Bucky says softly.

Steve says nothing for the minute it takes them to feel how heavy everything has gotten.

"I promised I'd get you there," Steve says. "And I will."

"Steve," Bucky says, stopping Steve's hand as he reaches to knock on the door.

"Yeah?" Steve turns back to him, shifting slightly.

Bucky thinks about Steve, the moment before shots blast onto a raft. It rocks them both, threatens to crack the logs in half. Bucky reaches for Steve, thinking, for just a second, he'll fall into the water if he doesn't.

His heart is in his throat for a moment, thinking <>he can’t lose him too. It isn’t sentiment, it’s mathematical. At some point, the losses outweigh the gains and all he’s left with is dust in his hands.

"When we get to the Citadel," he starts and then he stops. His mouth tastes like copper, his pulse spiking in his chest. "Remind me to thank you."

What he wants to say is, _save yourself_.

Steve takes that in with a half smile that briefly twists the scar across his face. It's mirthless, something tired that doesn't reach his eyes. His smiles never do.

"We get there without dying," Steve says, without showing teeth. "And I'll make sure you remember."  
  
  
Steve raps on the door sharply, six times, in a strange pattern. Bucky expects someone to answer, an eye through a peephole, a forehead through cracks in wooden slats.

What he doesn't expect is for the shuttered door to slide open and for inside to be a person who looks almost exactly like Shuri.

“Yes?” the man asks. Then his eyes slide over from Steve to Bucky. For a moment he says nothing, his tense features rippling gently with surprise. Then it crumpled into something like sharp relief. “Bucky Barnes! Finally.”

“T’Challa,” Bucky says, equally in surprise. He feels something in him snap, relief flooding every part that had gone numb with stress.

“We have been waiting for you, my friend,” T’Challa says and before Bucky can warn him about how filthy he is, he finds himself embraced by the other man, pulled into a crushing, relieved hug.

“How are you here?” Bucky asks, exhaling, arms around T’Challa in response. “Where is Shuri? Is she okay? Shit. T’Challa.”

T’Challa pulls back, hands clapped on Bucky’s shoulders.

“All in due time, my friend,” he says. “Shuri is where she needs to be. She misses you. I do not think anyone else bickered with her half as much.”

“If she stopped being a little shit,” Bucky mutters and T’Challa’s expression lightens into something resembling laughter.

The other man steps back and looks around them before ushering them both in.

“There are too many stray eyes and ears about these days,” he says. “Come inside, we expected you days ago.”

Steve and Bucky exchange a look as they pass in. T’Challa closes the door behind them and Bucky can feel Steve tense next to him. He understands. In any other circumstance, someone locking a door behind Bucky in a foreign place would make him breathless with panic. He brushes his fingers against Steve’s wrist unthinkingly, trying to convey to him that they can trust T’Challa.

After a moment, Steve gives him a tight nod and Bucky moves his hand away.

“This is Steve,” Bucky says, once T’Challa’s turned around. There are stray bars of light filtering in through the gaps in the boarded windows. It isn’t bright, but it illuminates T’Challa, casting a glow about his edges, as though he doesn’t always look like a king.

He steps forward and the glow is gone, his face in shadows with the rest of him.

“You are the coyote?” he asks, giving Steve a discerning look.

“Yeah,” Steve says. T’Challa offers a hand and he takes it. “Sorry for the delay. HYDRA’s crawling all over the countryside looking for us. Had to abandon our truck after Cold Spring.”

T’Challa doesn’t look surprised.

“We’ve heard rumors,” he says. He nods at Bucky and lets go of Steve’s hand. “Come, it is not safe to speak of these things here.”

Bucky looks around them. The safe house is lacking, for lack of a better of word. They’re standing in a dark room connected to a dark hallway and the square rooms that peel off at intervals all seem the same—dark, abandoned, covered in a layer of dirt.

“Where exactly is it safe?” Steve asks, looking around skeptically as well. “To talk speak of these things?”

At that, T’Challa’s stern face softens into something that resembles the mischief Shuri’s always wearing openly on hers.

“I will show you,” he says.  
  
  
Halfway down the corridor is a room that’s a convergence of other rooms. It’s in the shape of a hexagon, with dirty, cracked black and white tiles covering the floor. There are no doors, but six doorways leading off from the hexagon, each opening onto another room or another hallway in its own right. There’s a staircase in the middle, leading to the second level. Bucky’s eyes flicker left and right, taking in the magnitude of the building. It hadn’t looked this large from the outside.

“What was this place?” Bucky murmurs.

“An asylum,” T’Challa says, sounding amused. “Or it was. A place to send those who needed to be corrected. We found the irony fitting.”

Steve’s by the staircase, looking up to the second floor.

“What’s up there?” he asks and his voice echoes a bit, deep and wondering.

“Ghosts,” T’Challa says. He steps up beside Steve and puts a hand on his lower back.

Steve looks at him sharply and T’Challa gives him a smile.

“We are not going up,” he says.

“Where are we going, then?” Steve asks, confused.

T’Challa moves past Steve and presses a hand to the second railing. For a moment nothing happens. Then with a smooth, crunching noise, the railing moves back toward the stairs.

No, Bucky thinks, his eyes growing larger. The entire stairs move.

“We are going down,” T’Challa grins.  
  
  
The staircase shifts, moving itself against and into the wall, slotting into what were previously invisible sections carved into the cement.

“Shit,” Bucky mutters and Steve looks as stunned as he feels.

“Do you think Shuri only made your arm?” T’Challa says, amused. “She is often bored and when she gets bored, things get, well, strange.”

“Little brat,” Bucky says fondly.

T’Challa jerks his head toward the stone staircase built under the floor, going down under the safe house. Bucky moves to follow him, but stops when he notices Steve hesitating.

“Hey,” he says quietly. “You okay?”

Steve turns his face toward Bucky and he looks—well, a little lost in memory, if Bucky’s being honest. He knows that expression intimately. He wears it often himself.

“It’s so different,” Steve says.

“From what?” Bucky frowns.

Steve’s eyes roam the room around them again and then down the stairs ahead of them. He has one hand on his hip, the other fiddling with the handle of his gun.

“From what I—” he starts and then stops. He shakes his head with a rueful smile. “Was expecting, I guess.”

Bucky doesn’t think that’s what Steve was going to say.

“This doesn’t change anything,” Bucky says. “I still need you to take me to the Citadel, Steve. It’s still you and me.”

Steve refocuses his gaze on Bucky and what Bucky sees there is—something steadier than what was there before. He thinks it again, that Steve feels like an anchor.

“Okay,” Steve says, pausing. And then, as though he’s trying out the words himself. “You and me.”

Bucky offers him a smile he doesn’t really feel and then jerks his head after T’Challa as they finally follow behind him.  
  
  
The underground house isn’t even close to what Bucky was expecting when he and Steve crossed the river. For one, it’s better lit than the dim corridors and rooms upstairs. For another, there are more people here than he would expect in the day and age of HYDRA raids. Bucky and Steve pass at least half a dozen people, just wandering in and out of rooms, some with clipboards, some with dazed expressions on their faces. One person Bucky passes has what he distantly remembers to be headphones on.

“What is that?” he asks, his head turning as the woman with the brown hair flashes him a smile and bops her head to whatever she’s listening to.

“A walkman,” Steve observes with a frown. “I didn’t know they still made those.”

“They don’t make anything anymore,” Bucky says, feeling his head spin a little. “HYDRA has control of all of the airwaves, every signal that’s transmitted.”

“They have full control of technology,” T’Challa agrees and turns with the hallway. “Or, had.”

“Had?” Bucky looks up in surprise.

Functional technology stopped existing some time before he was born. Bucky’s used to a world caught in between the memory of technology and what’s left when all of that is wrested away. He knows light bulbs and cars and has seen a television monitor or two in his life, but there isn’t much else he’s grasped within his own two hands.

Once, when he was younger, his father gave him an old digital watch. It had stopped working years ago, but Bucky had liked the feel of it against his wrist. He had kept wearing it until a State soldier had seen him and ripped it away from him. _That’s illegal_ , the Soldier had rasped out. Bucky had watched him crush the old, nonfunctional watch under the heel of his boot and mourned, for a moment, all that could have been.

“I thought you knew my sister, Barnes,” T’Challa’s mouth twitches. “And I was under the impression you had also met Tony Stark.”

"Once," Bucky says, distracted by the open door to a room they pass. "Or twice. We didn't exchange friendship bracelets."

"Strange," T'Challa says with a small laugh. "He is so easy to get along with."

Steve stops in front of the room Bucky's still staring into.

"What is this?" he frowns.

Inside, there are at least three people bent over a rough wooden table, something with knobs and circuitry pulled apart in front of them.

"We are testing our options," T'Challa says.

"With what?" Steve's eyes seem to skim the contents of the room, the windowless walls, the people, the bare bones of a place well-used and not lived-in.

"Airwaves," T'Challa says after a moment's pause.

He doesn't offer more explanation, although Bucky has an idea of what he means. The loss of the airwaves had been one of the first blows to free society. HYDRA had taken all sources of communication during their first wave. Over night, the country had gone dark. When the morning had broken, every source of mass-communication had gone and a dystopia had constructed itself on the ruins of their past.

The blackout was well before Bucky's time, but he remembers reading about it in a long-banned book, one of those his father smuggled away from the university before schools were prohibited for subversion. His father, who had been a professor, had brought back books from the past, about the past, and Bucky would sit with his mother on the old, worn couch in their living room, tracing the words, imagining what it could have looked like, to have telephones and the Internet.

T'challa moves away, but Bucky lingers for a moment at the doorway, his fingers against the doorframe.

If the Eyes are aiming to get back the airwaves—it might be nothing, but it could be something. Bucky doesn't let himself feel hope, or at least he doesn't give it that name. It could happen, he thinks. After he gets to the Citadel, plays his part in this long chess game. He's not a pawn, but something more. A knight to a rook, climb the tower, take the castle, set up the checkmate.

"You will tell me what you have seen along the way," T'Challa says as he comes to a stop in front of a doorway halfway down the hall. "But first, you must rest. You have both come on a long journey and you have a long way to go."

"We can't stay long, T'Challa," Bucky says and T'Challa turns toward him.

Shuri's older brother is regal in a way his sister is not. It's not a good thing or a bad thing, it's simply a fact that sets the two of them apart. Shuri was an innovator, a vibrant, precocious, brilliant mind, but at the end of the day, she was a little sister, and that mattered to her a lot. It mattered to Bucky too. T'Challa was maybe the opposite of all of that. He was stern and contemplative, quiet where she was loud. He was the quintessential older brother and maybe that was why Bucky trusted him as much as he did. He remembers seeing T'Challa only a week of his recovery with the Eyes, but it had been enough to see how much revolved around him. He wasn't the leader—maybe there was no leader at all—but he was something, that much was clear. He walked among them like another rebel, but held his chin high, like a king.

If there is anyone to trust, in all of the world, Bucky knows it's this man.

"I know," T'Challa says, gently. "Nor will I ask you to. But you must both rest tonight and resupply before leaving. Let us send out scouts to see where HYDRA is lying in wait."

"Could do with a shower," Bucky admits, as he runs a hand through his hair. It's matted again, dirty and knotted from being soaked in river water. It's more than just the smell on his skin at this point—it's also how the dirt has dried on top, creating a layer of grime that might be taking on its own sentience.

"It would not be unwelcome," T'Challa's mouth twitches.

Bucky almost has the wherewithal to look apologetic, but the ride is fast catching up to him, the spike of energy born from reaching the safe house wearing off quickly. The weariness is tugging at his depleting stores, his exhaustion so bone deep, it's nearly in his blood.

"Rest, friend," T'Challa says. It's only then that he turns to Steve, who's been standing behind Bucky with a terse look on his friend. "These two rooms are yours, as is any hospitality we have to offer. We do not always have much, but what we do have, we offer with open hands."

"An eye for an Eye," Bucky says softly.

T'Challa smiles and tips his head.

"An eye for an Eye indeed," he says. "Brother."

Bucky watches T'Challa go, hand on the doorknob leading into the first room. Before T'Challa's halfway down the hall, there are at least two people who stop him. They tell him things, excitedly, or ask him something, wonderingly. He handles it with an effortless grace.

When he moves, his head is wreathed by the glow of the lights behind him.

"How'd he come by the Eyes?" Steve asks quietly, watching after him.

That, Bucky almost certainly has the answer to.

"Didn't you know, Steve?" he says, softly. "When the world ends, it comes for people of color first."

Shuri had told him that, once.

"It takes all kinds," Steve murmurs. He seems almost in a reverie, taken by something of T'Challa, caught in a thought or a memory.

"Look Ma, two whole rooms," Bucky says instead.

That turns Steve's attention back to the doors in front of them and Bucky beside him.

"What're we gonna do with that?" he asks.

"Sleep peacefully?" Bucky offers. "A whole bed each. No floors that smell like mold."

"I didn't tell you to take the moldy floor," Steve says.

"I was pissed at you and it was the principle of the fuckin' matter," Bucky says, sticking a finger into Steve's chest and pushing.

Steve's mouth curves into a half-smile. Bucky kind of hates himself for thinking it's becoming a little more familiar.

"You were pissed at me, so you gave yourself a bad back and a headache from spores?" he asks.

"Fuck you, my back is great," Bucky says, without heat. He shoves Steve's chest with his solitary finger again. "You make all these promises to a guy before you marry him and then you have all this commentary and your idea of a romantic night out is getting wheat stuck in my hair."

Steve's expression looks half-tired and half-terribly amused.

"You still have wheat stuck in your hair," he says. He reaches over and sure enough, plucks a fuzzy, white husk out of Bucky's hair.

"What the fuck," Bucky whispers. "You let me walk around with T'Challa with wheat in my hair?"

"Thought it looked cute," Steve says with a stupid wink. "Anything for my husband."

"Fuck your husband," Bucky grips, which he realizes only a second later is the wrong thing to say.

"Now sugar, I think I was promised a blowjob, first," Steve says softly, which earns a huffed laugh from Bucky.

Maybe Bucky's reeling from the exhaustion or maybe he's just wound entirely too tight, but it almost comforts him, Steve's stupid attempt at flirting when all he wants to do is collapse into a bathtub.

"I think you said something about me smelling like a river's vomit, so I'll pass," Bucky says.

"That's misconstruing what I said, but I guess I wouldn't hate a shower," Steve says, more seriously. His hand is on the knob to his own room, when he pauses. "You gonna be okay? By yourself?"

There’s no reason he shouldn’t be. Bucky was on his own long before he met Steve and it’s not as though sharing a bed one time and the floor of a cold room the other time and staring at Steve’s back in the moonlight in a field of wheat a few times means he’s used to his presence now or even desires it. Still, Bucky can’t deny that there was something comforting about knowing there was someone there with him, to hear his breathing and feel his warmth against his back, even if it was Steve.

It must be the exhaustion again, because for a brief moment, Bucky considers saying no. He considers telling Steve that he's afraid if he's left alone, his thoughts will grab hold of him, growing out of his brain like creeping tentacles, curling tight around his throat.

He wonders what that would look like, for him to tell Steve to stay.

They owe nothing to each other. They’re two traveling companions, fake husbands, a mission and a destination. It doesn’t matter if Bucky’s starting to recognize the rhythm of Steve’s breathing or how his body reacts to moments of extreme stress. It matters even less that he has memorized the tense line of his jaw when he’s thinking, or the expression around his eyes when he goes far away.

It doesn’t make sense that Bucky would ask Steve to stay. It doesn’t make sense that he halfway wants to.

In the end, that's what makes him say it.

"I'll be fine, Steve," he says softly, not because he wants to, but precisely because he doesn't.

“Okay,” Steve says in response. His eyes flicker over to Bucky, his mouth pulled a little close, the space between his eyebrows slightly crinkled. “I’ll be next door, if you need me.”

“I know where to find you,” Bucky promises.

That seems to satisfy whatever Steve’s looking for, because it’s only then that he nods, opens the door, and slips into his room.

Bucky considers the grains of wood on the door, pressing his palm against it, breathing in and out through his nose steadily.

Once he realizes his eyes have fallen closed, he opens them again.

Then he too slips into his room.  
  
  
Bucky’s never been more tempted to sink into the bed, straight through the mattress onto the cement floor. Distantly, he recognizes that at this point, he’s probably an incubator for half a dozen diseases and is probably growing organisms on three different body parts. He wills the exhaustion at bay long enough to strip out of his filthy clothes, shove himself under the hot shower, and let out a thoroughly satisfied moan as he scrubs himself clean for the first time in days.

He stands under the stream until it turns cool, swipes a towel perfunctorily across his body and just through his hair, before actually throwing himself onto the bed.

He doesn’t know what time it is and he honestly couldn’t care less. He doesn’t bother to see if the Eyes have left him spare clothes. He crawls under the covers, damp and naked, and falls asleep before his eyes have even closed.  
  
  
He wakes up, blearily, to the sound of knocking on his door. Bucky’s eyes snap open, the plates on his arm shifting. He looks over to the sliver of light crawling in from the hallway.

“Bucky?”

It’s Steve, sounding a little quiet and a lot alert.

Steve knocks again and Bucky forces himself up in bed.

“Sec,” he groggily calls out.

He looks about the room a little wildly and finds a robe laid across a chair. He drags himself out of bed and shoves it on, barely remembering to tie the front shut before opening the door.

“Hey,” he says, looking at Steve.

Steve looks better than he has in ages. He seems well-rested, the lines of his face slightly less severe, his hair washed and combed back, his beard lacking in clods of dirt.

He’s wearing a new shawl wrapped around his neck, plain and a bit like the color of red clay. Underneath, Bucky can see a long, airy tunic and a pair of fresh linen pants.

“Sorry to wake you,” Steve says, still quiet.

“‘sfine,” Bucky says, voice thick with sleep. “I was awake.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Steve says, mouth twitching at the corner. His eyes skim down Bucky’s robes for just the flicker of a second and Bucky dimly wonders if he tied the belt properly. “I just didn’t want you to worry.”

“About what?” Bucky feels himself become a little more alert at that. He rubs his palms into his eyes, trying to press away the burning sensation. He doesn’t know how long he was asleep for, but it wasn’t enough. “Everything okay? We need to go?”

“No,” Steve says quickly, shaking his head. “Everything’s fine. I’m just going out to scout.”

“Scout,” Bucky says slowly. “Thought T’Challa was sending people out for that.”

“He is,” Steve agrees. “I trust him, but I’m a little restless. Want to see what’s going on for myself. You gonna be okay?”

“Are you asking me if I can take care of myself in a safe house under a fake staircase, filled with allies?” Bucky asks. He raises an eyebrow.

Steve doesn’t blush or, at least, Bucky has never seen him blush, but if he didn’t know better, he’d swear Steve’s neck flushes a little pink.

“We still got something to finish,” Steve says. “Want to make sure you’re safe.”

Bucky’s not entirely sure how to read that, can’t really tell if it’s suspiciously sweet or some kinda dig at his ability to take care of himself. He’s too tired to parse through words, so he just shrugs.

“See this arm?” Bucky says and shrugs his metal arm. “Fun fact, I can use it to punch through steel and iron. So yeah, Steve, I’ll be fine.”

“Okay. Sorry,” Steve says, conceding. Then he shifts on his feet. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

He turns on his heels, the motion slow and sure, like a brick wall turning on a point. Bucky often doesn’t know how to reach Steve or even what to expect from him. But sometimes, he can tell in the way he moves that he’s holding something back.

“Steve,” Bucky says before he gets too far. Steve stops and looks back at him. “You gonna be okay?”

He asks it because it’s a good thing to check and because sometimes it seems like what Steve is missing is someone to just ask him if he’s okay. Bucky thinks that must be the only reason he asks, but there’s something undefined here too, maybe genuine curiosity, or the hope that the answer is going to be yes.

“I don’t have a metal arm,” Steve says with half a smile. “But I can punch things too.”

That isn’t an answer, really.

“Stay safe, asshole,” Bucky says, returning the half-smile.

Bucky’s never noticed before, but sometimes when Steve pauses, he takes a corner of his bottom lip into his mouth, like he has to ground himself before answering. He notices it now though, eyes skimming over Steve’s face, searching for something—an answer, or a question.

“Okay,” Steve says. “I will.”

He leaves and Bucky finds whatever anxiety he constantly lives with thrum strongly under his fingertips, calling his attention to the tight feeling in his chest, as though he could ignore it. It feels almost as though Steve’s well-being actually matters to him; almost as though he cares what happens to his coyote.  
  
  
He can’t go back to sleep after that, so he finds the spare set of clothes set out for him, changes into linen pants and a tunic that matches what Steve was wearing. He brushes his long hair back, contemplates the dark facial hair settling onto his face with a kind of startled surprise, and slips out to find T’Challa.

The safe house, it seems, functions not only as a halfway house for the rebels the Eyes are hiding, but some kind of central intelligence center as well. Bucky looks through the open doorways into each room and doesn’t find his friend, although he does keep stumbling on other people, deciphering intercepted messages or using a signal blocker to hack onto public HYDRA servers to extract propaganda and their current blacklist.

Bucky’s head is a little fuzzy with all of the details, the mechanisms of war being laid out and picked apart in an underground bunker that Bucky hadn’t really known about.

His time with the Eyes is something of a blur now, his memories concentrated in very specific instances of his recovery, confined to certain wings and certain corridors, with only the pain in his body and the jumbled programming in his head. He remembers a few people coming to talk to him—Natasha, to tell him where he was and who he was, and Tony Stark, to get specs for a new arm, and Shuri to ask him if it was okay that Tony had gotten specs for a new arm. He thinks, hazily, he had met others too—someone with a single eye and someone or something called the Wasp and a parade of other Eyes who had talked to him, in quiet murmurs, and when the voices and the faces had gotten too loud, they had sent in T’Challa, who had sat down with Bucky and asked him, in his kind, measured voice, “What is it that you want, Bucky Barnes?”

Bucky thinks he wasn’t selected for the Eyes because he’s any specific kind of asset. They chose him because what he had said, to T’Challa, was “Revenge.”

Revenge is something the Eyes could work with. Revenge is the ends justify the means kind of goal, or maybe that any end is a proper end as long as the end is revenge. Bucky isn’t stupid. He knows that he’s precisely the right man because he’s willing to give the rebellion everything in him for that end, even if it is _his_ end too. That’s the kind of motive that’s weaponizable by any side; it just so happens that the Eyes are the side he aligns with most.

“You are the Winter Soldier?” a man says, startling Bucky out of his thoughts.

He’s been standing in the middle of a doorway for longer than he’s realized.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, blinking. “I guess they call me that.”

“Hm,” the man says. He’s a large, black man with dark tattoos crawling up his neck. His hair is short and cropped to the top. Half of what he’s wearing is leather and he has a necklace of sharpened bone around his throat. “You are smaller than I imagined.”

Bucky frowns, vaguely aware that he’s being insulted, but also exceptionally aware of how large he actually is. His metal arm never lets him forget.

“You been imagining me?” he asks.

“I suppose it is normal to imagine your savior,” the man says, flashing Bucky a kind of patronizing, shit-eating grin. “You are our savior, yes?”

“I’m just a man with a disc,” Bucky says. It’s more than he should say, but his fingers find their way to his necklace. “And a death wish, some days.”

“Ah yes,” the man says. “Shuri told me about her disc.”

That makes Bucky step into the room.

“You know Shuri?” he asks. “Is she okay?”

“Oh, it is Shuri,” the man replies, dismissively. “I am sure she will find a way to be, if she does not find herself at the end of something sharp for her insolence first.”

“Who are you?” Bucky asks, parsing through the man’s words and finding them wanting. His latent older brother instincts flare out; he doesn’t like the man’s harsh words at all.

The man studies him, casually, as though it’s no real matter. He’s sitting on a couch, behind a large coffee table on which papers and printed photographs are printed out. He legs are spread apart, his shoulders eating up any space the rest of his body isn’t. He exudes dominance and power in a way not even Steve can claim to.

“M’Baku,” the man—M’Baku says. “And who are you, Winter Soldier?”

“Barnes,” Bucky says, after a minute. “Bucky. Can I sit?”

M’Baku inclines his head and gestures to an empty chair across from him.

“I couldn’t find T’Challa,” Bucky says. His eyes scan the papers in front of him, but he can make neither hide nor hair of what they say. His gaze flicker back up to the other man and he finds M’Baku watching him. “These aren’t in English.”

“Nor any human language. Cryptology still exists,” M’Baku grins. “Are you surprised?”

“I thought HYDRA killed most things,” Bucky admits. “Technology. Universities.”

Intellectuals. Professors.

“They tried,” M’Baku shrugs. “They will always try. They will not always succeed. T’Challa is making his rounds.”

“Rounds?” Bucky asks.

“He has gone out with the scouts,” M’Baku says. “There is a rotation, I suppose. Some idea of his, I cannot be bothered to care about. And he gets boring when he is locked up for too long.”

“Boring?” Bucky says.

“Do you only repeat words someone else has just said?” M’Baku raises an eyebrow. “Yes, he is insufferable when he doesn’t prowl the streets. He is annoying, like a cat.”

Bucky doesn’t know enough to dispute what M’Baku’s said, he guesses, so he nods at the table.

“Cryptologist?”

“I am not only handsome, I am brilliant,” M’Baku says with another grin. Then he nods at Bucky’s necklace. “The disc. You haven’t lost it. I made a bet with Shuri that you would.”

“Worth more than my life to lose what she gave me,” Bucky says. “How much do you owe her?”

“Perhaps something,” M’Baku says. “Perhaps nothing. It depends what I feel like giving her.”

“Don’t think that’s how a bet works,” Bucky mutters, but M’Baku’s looking at him like there’s something else he wants to say and it has nothing to do with teenage prodigies.

“She told me what it does,” M’Baku says then. “You are a crazy person, Bucky Barnes.”

It’s a relief, in a sense, for someone to know. Here, halfway to the end point, it’s a comfort—even a luxury—for someone to look him in the eyes, know exactly what he’s going to the Citadel to do, and say, Bucky Barnes, you are a crazy son of a bitch.

That really does make him smile.

“So I am,” he says. “Tell me what I’ve missed, M’Baku.”

M’Baku grins and leans forward, hands against his knees.

“Ah,” he says. “Now you’re asking the interesting questions.”

 

M’Baku tells Bucky this: that there’s a war and HYDRA isn’t winning. They aren’t losing either, but they aren’t winning, despite all propaganda and coercive measures. The Eyes are spreading, prolific underground, a weed HYDRA can’t quite uproot. For every blacklist they circulate, the Eyes get a copy. For every Eye they kill, three more are initiated. Bucky’s old face is plastered all over the country, to hell and back, but it isn’t the same kind of fear there was before, the same brand of blind, terrified obedience.

People are wary now. They’re angry.

“The tide is turning,” M’Baku says. “You are the key. Does that frighten you?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, feeling it in a place he’s afraid to touch. “I’m scared shitless.”

“Does that make a difference?” M’Baku follows up, eyes glinting.

“No,” Bucky says without hesitation. “It makes no difference at all.”

“Good,” M’Baku grins. “Because I am looking forward to what comes next.”  
  
  
And what is it that comes next?

Bucky and the disc, across half the country. Cities and towns, burning, lives destroyed, HYDRA soldiers with the permission to kill, indiscriminately. It’s the highway to hell and it’s littered with the souls of everyone Bucky’s meant to save.

Bucky and his mission.

Bucky, and Steve.

He gets up from the chair, shaking, M’Baku looking up at him, the glint in his eyes bright and dangerous, like a mad man who knows exactly what he’s doing.

“Will you run from this, Bucky Barnes?” M’Baku asks. “Are you not tired of running?”

Bucky flexes his metal hand instinctively, his fingers opening and closing, one by one. There’s a whirring sound, louder than before, the blood thudding against his pulse points.

“Just let them try to catch me,” he says.  
  
  
Steve comes back with the scouts and he’s sweaty and wary, but his eyes shine a little brighter than they did before. It’s only a few hours and, if Bucky hasn’t missed him, he’s at least glad to see him. He has scrapes, a layer of sweat and grime shining on his skin again.

“There are HYDRA patrols raiding the edges of the city,” T’Challa explains. He has a bloody gash across his forehead, a rip at the chest of his black stealth suit. “They are beginning to raze any place with expected allegiances to the Winter Soldier.”

“The Winter Soldier?” Bucky asks, glancing from T’Challa to Steve. His eyes linger on Steve. There’s a small cut under his chin. His arms are nearly bursting out of his tunic, which is dirty and torn.

“They think you’re leading the rebellion,” Steve says. “They think you’re the Eye.”

“They will kill anyone to keep you from being a symbol of hope,” T’Challa says.

“Is it working?” Bucky asks.

“No,” T’Challa says. “Hope is the easiest to kill, but all it needs is a spark to live. That is why they are afraid, Bucky Barnes. That is why we must get you to the Citadel.”

As though Bucky needs telling twice. He can nearly breathe with the need to be out of here, to make a move, some kind of move, forward.

“M’Baku told me there’s a war,” Bucky says.

T’Challa gives him a half smile, wipes away at the blood on his forehead.

“You are listening to M’Baku? It was my mistake for leaving you alone with him,” he says. “Still, he is right. There is a war, even if it is not on the surface. People are not insects. If you step on them, they will fight back.”

Bucky moves forward and the rest of the scouts disperse, go into a separate room to report their findings.

“So what does that mean?” he asks, because it seems momentous, but he’s just one person, traveling across one part of the country.

“It means that they are scared,” T’Challa smiles, “that we will win.”  
  
  
T’Challa excuses himself to follow the rest of the scouts, leaving Bucky and Steve in the corridor. Steve’s said nothing this entire time, although he’s been listening, something wondrous and torn caught in his expression when he thinks Bucky isn’t paying attention. He misses Bucky’s eyes, flickering to him as he talks to T’Challa, the way Bucky notices the places he’s been hurt, listening to his breathing to make sure it’s steady.

“Are you okay?” Bucky asks, not because Steve needs it, because he wants to.

“Yeah,” Steve says. He lifts a hand to his mouth, sucks at a slightly bloodied scratch on the back of it. Bucky watches him, a sharp swirl in the bottom of his stomach. “You?”

“I got what I needed,” he says. “Are you ready to go?”

Steve rolls his shoulders, and slowly tilts his head.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Just say when.”

*

_they will not force us_  
_they will stop degrading us_  
_they will not control us_  
_we will be victorious_  
[uprising; muse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8KQmps-Sog)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A LOT happens in an uprising, phew, but I'd be lying if I said there wasn't more to come. We're at the halfway mark, but buckle in!
> 
> If you have feelings and thoughts, let me know them!


	6. on the road; crossing district lines.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You just need to do it for a reason,” Bucky says. “It doesn’t have to be for something you get, after. If I survive, then I survive and hopefully everything’s better for it. I’m not doing it because of that. There’s no pay off for me, Steve. I just want to avenge my family, do something with my anger. That so wrong?”
> 
> Steve doesn’t say anything for a long time. 
> 
> Bucky’s about to start packing their camp to head out when he finally looks up. 
> 
> “No, Buck,” Steve says. “That’s not so wrong.”

_if you look into the distance, there's a house upon the hill_  
_guiding like a lighthouse to a place where you'll be_  
_safe to feel at grace 'cause we've all made mistakes_  
_if you've lost your way, i will leave the light on_

 

*

**on the road; crossing over into the eastern district.**

They leave by cover of night, their supplies restocked, the motorcycle refueled.

"Good luck, Bucky Barnes," T'Challa says to him by the staircase, as it shifts back to its normal position. "I do not know if we will see one another again, but I will pray to our Gods that we do."

"I don't have a God of my own, so hope it's okay if I rely on yours," Bucky says and when he holds out a hand for T'Challa to shake, T'Challa embraces him again instead.

"My Gods are yours, brother," T'Challa says with a smile and lets go. Then he turns to Steve. "And you, Steve Rogers. The Eyes have said that you are the best there is. Is that true?"

"Guess so," Steve replies. "I have no choice but to be."

"It will all become clear once you reach the Citadel," T'Challa says and to Steve he offers a handshake. "My best advice is to shoot without hesitating and run when they get too close. There will be little safe passage between here and where you are going and everything in between will be a snake's trap. Do not get caught. Run and run fast."

"I'm good at running," Steve says, taking T'Challa's hand and shaking it. "I'm even better at shooting."

Bucky almost says something, but manages to suppress it and a smile at the last moment.

"T'Challa, will you say thanks to Shuri for me?" Bucky says and he flexes his metal arm to show how natural it's become. "She saved my life, in a lot of different ways."

"She is good for that, my sister," T'Challa says. "Also good for being a pain in my neck, but I suppose that is her right as a little sister."  
  
  
Bucky gives T'Challa a half smile.

"Good luck and Gods speed," T'Challa says to the both of them. They open the front door and look down onto a deserted street. The motorcycle is waiting near the back. The moon is shining bright and high in the bottled ink sky.

"Remember," T'Challa says, just before they leave. "Shoot first and then, if that does not work—then you run."  
  
  
"When're you gonna let me drive this thing?" Bucky asks as he climbs onto the back of the motorcycle behind Steve.

"You know how to drive a motorbike, Barnes?" Steve asks. "You learn that while I was gone scouting for four hours?"

"Maybe," Bucky grumbles. "I'm a fast learner, pal."

"You're a fast bullshitter," Steve snorts. "Put your arms around my waist and shut up."

"This is easily the worst marriage I've ever been in," Bucky complains, but he does as he's told.

It's not even much of an ask, really, to tell him to wrap his arms around Steve's narrow waist. Now, well-rested and well-fed, with the fire burning under his skin, he notices what he was too exhausted to notice before. That not only does Steve have a broad, wall of a chest, but his biceps are thick, straining at the material of his dark navy shirt, the thighs bent around the bike huge, and the muscles at his abdomen hard. He's built like a fucking tank, hard and indestructible and if Bucky's not careful thinking about it and feeling Steve out with his mind, Steve's not the only thing that's gonna be hard and indestructible.

"Tighter," Steve instructs.

"Jesus fuck," Bucky curses and tightens his arms, leaning more and more into Steve, breathing in his scent and soaking up his warmth.

"Almost sounds like our wedding night," Steve says and Bucky can almost _see_ the pleased smirk he wishes he could punch off his coyote's face.

"If you think tight is what we're looking for on our wedding night, it's clear you've never fucked a man," Bucky says, voice muffled into the muscles of Steve's back.

Steve pauses as he starts the motorcycle, the engine a quiet purr, loud in the dark, quiet streets.

Again, Bucky feels it, the reverberations from the bike, starting in his toes and working their way back up.

"I've fucked men," Steve says.

That's interesting information, Bucky thinks briefly, before Steve closes the choke, opens the throttle, and they peel away from Stone Mountain.  
  
  
It's easier to travel by night, when the moon is illuminating their path and the world is a silent smudge around them. Steve and T'Challa had looked at the maps as they readied to leave, charting out the course they needed to take from Stone Mountain to cross through the Eastern District and down into the District itself. Getting farther East would be more difficult than it had been to cross from the West to the Middle District. The West was spread wide, with stretches of desert and punctuated by mountains. Everything East of the Missouri River was cloistered closer together, with less room to breathe and certainly less room to hide.

And that was only the landscape. The Eastern District surrounded the capital itself and the Citadel sat at the heart of it all, HYDRA's powerbase, the home to its commanding leaders, signal towers, technological databases, and infrastructure. That meant HYDRA soldiers, everywhere.

Steve had originally through the best way to the Citadel might be to cut down through the Southern District and back up, but T'Challa had advised against it, warning that the Eyes did not have the best strongholds down South. For every pocket of resistance, HYDRA had multiple bases littering the South, each shored up through dozens, if not hundreds, of State soldiers, armed to the teeth with rifles and weapons that would electrocute on sight.

Instead, T'Challa and Steve had decided the best way might actually be through the Eastern District itself, where HYDRA soldiers were slightly more scattered between towns and cities and the Eyes had more allies.

"Get to New Breukelen," T'Challa says. "You can cut through most of the country here up North, keep to the backroads and small towns. Stay anonymous and hidden. Tony is there, Barnes. He will know how to get you into the Citadel."

“New Breukelen,” Bucky repeats, tracing the space on the map. He hasn’t been back home in a long time. He doesn’t know what’s waiting for him there when he returns.

“We can give you two weeks,” T’Challa says. “Everything depends on this, but we will move without it. Our operatives do not have much more time than that.”  
  
  
There's no small amount of country to cross to get from Stone Mountain to New Breukelen, but the advantage of cutting through a more crowded Eastern District was that there were fewer checkpoints.

"More towns," Steve had explained to Bucky, showing him the map. "The Soldiers are mostly garrisoned at all of the towns scattered through the district. Makes less of a need for random checkpoints. We need all the advantages we can get."

So they stay away from the towns they cross, sometimes skirting around them, sometimes doubling back when they can't.

By the time the sun starts to rise, Bucky has no idea where they are anymore. He's tired and every part of his body aches. Another hour and he's liable to fall off this bike.

"We should rest," Steve agrees, as though he can clearly hear what Bucky is mumbling into his back.

Steve turns off the back road, slows the bike down some ten miles off from the nearest town, according to the signs.

"I think this used to be some kind of a National Park," Steve says as he cuts the engine in a space of grass in between a large stretch of trees.

"Now it's just the kinda place two fugitives can catch some shut eye," Bucky says, blinking sleepily against the early morning sun.

"I'll take first watch," Steve says.

"Steve, no," Bucky protests, trying to stifle a yawn as Steve takes the packs off the motorcycle. There are two bedrolls tied tightly together. He unties both of them, sets one up by a large tree that can hide them both from anyone wandering close by. "You've been driving all night."

"I'm not tired, Bucky," Steve says. "Promise. And you can't keep your eyes open."

"'sbullshit," Bucky says, trying again, and failing, to smother a yawn.

"I'll be here when you wake up," Steve says and at Bucky's furious, stormy look, amends, "I'll wake you up when I can't keep my eyes open any longer. That okay?"

"Self sacrificing fake husband bullshit," Bucky grumbles, but he's, of course, grateful for it. He's so tired he can feel his head start to ache. "The second your eyes start drooping, Rogers. Or I'll kick your scruffy blond ass."

"My ass ain’t scruffy," Steve remarks and Bucky grumbles some more as he slides into his bedroll.

"Always talking about asses and never giving me any," Bucky mumbles. "Worst marriage a guy's ever been in."

He turns his back to the tree for protection and watches Steve settle down on top of his bedroll, against a tree nearby.

The other man is opening a sandwich they packed, head leaning back against the tree trunk, throat exposed to Bucky. The stretch of pale skin is soothing to watch, his Adam’s apple moving up and down as he swallows.

Bet it tastes good, Bucky thinks confusedly, just before sleep takes him.  
  
  
At least, true to his promise, Bucky feels himself roused awake what could be a few hours or a few days later. He startles, his senses sharpening immediately, hand going for his knife, but Steve's hands are firmly on his shoulder instantly.

"Hey, sorry, it's me, it's Steve," he says. "Sorry, Buck. You said to wake you if I—"  
  
  
"Yeah," Bucky says immediately, groggily. He sits up in his bed roll, his head spinning a little, nausea fighting with some relief that he'd gotten any sleep at all. "How long's it been, punk?"

"A few hours," Steve says, mouth twitching. "Not too bad. But I can't seem to keep my eyes open anymore. Sorry."

"Stop apologizing for being human," Bucky says with a large, wide yawn. "'sannoying. Go sleep. I'll keep watch."

Steve moves his hand away, much to Bucky's distant disappointment.

"Thanks," Steve says gratefully. "Just an hour and I"ll be fine."

"If you don't sleep for more than an hour, I'll kick your ass from here to the Citadel," Bucky says. He shoves at Steve's shoulders and Steve, squatting on his knees, sways on the front of his feet. "Go."

Steve gets up with a smile.

Then he crosses back to his bedroll, wraps his shawl around himself, and immediately closes his eyes.

Bucky watches him tensely for a few seconds before hearing, almost instantly, the sound of Steve's breathing even out.

He breathes out in relief and then, shaking the sleep out of his limbs, goes to find a sandwich for himself.  
  
  
Their paranoia and anxiety persist, concentrated and heavy, but stretched out over a longer period of time, so they never sleep long and they never wake up well-rested. They spend their days drowsing and their nights traveling and the time in between, they make a kind of routine for themselves. It takes Bucky a moment to recognize that it feels almost normal. Normal for two fugitives on the run. Normal for them.

Sometimes Steve will leave their camp to go out scouting and other times Bucky will tell Steve to shut up and leave him to go hunting, picking up rabbits or a deer he manages to overtake, or gathering edible berries and mushrooms he knows aren’t poisonous. They aren’t wilderpeople though, so sometimes what hunting means is that Steve stands by their motorcycle camp, arms tightly crossed at his chest, while Bucky covers his face with a cloth, scales the side of a farmhouse or a house abandoned in the middle of a stretch of land run wild with weeds and wheat.

He always comes back whole, with food and supplies for them, but the crease between Steve’s eyes keeps growing deeper and after a while stops going away altogether.

“What if someone’s in there?” Steve hisses at Bucky as he pulls Steve’s shawl over his shoulders, covering his head and sliding it over his mouth. Bucky’s immediately engulfed under the smell of Steve, all sweat and wind and that musk he’s starting to memorize.

“Then I’ll hide,” Bucky says, ignoring him.

“What if they shoot?” Steve glares.

“Then I’ll duck,” Bucky shrugs. He unstraps his knives from his calves and reattaches them to bands hidden under his sleeves.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Steve glowers and Bucky grins at him. “You’re going to get yourself killed for a bag of cold cereal.”

“Aw, bring you back some nice and hot, sweetheart,” Bucky says, blowing Steve a kiss and slipping behind the nearest tree. “Don’t wait up.”

“Fucking pain in my ass,” Steve mutters before turning back to the camp to wait, arms tightly crossed at his chest.  
  
  
Sometimes Steve leaves the camp hidden in the underbrush and creeps behind Bucky.

“Don’t follow me inside,” Bucky tells him during these times. “You’re loud as an elephant.”

“Fuck you, I’m plenty quiet,” Steve growls back just as he steps on something that goes crack into the night.

Bucky whirls on him then, sticking his finger in Steve’s chest and pressing into it hard.

“You’re going to get us killed, you asshole,” he hisses. “If you’re going to be my keeper, then keep watch outside. It’ll be faster without you breaking shit in every room.”

Steve scowls furiously at that, but Bucky leans tall over him, threatening in a way he usually doesn’t make known. It takes a few seconds of silent and irritable posturing, but finally Steve grunts his assent.

Bucky breaks into the dark ranch and Steve begrudgingly waits outside, keeping watch.

Bucky’s in and out and with plenty of loot to share. Steve doesn’t look pleased, so Bucky makes sure to gloat until Steve throws a stick at him to shut him up.  
  
  
A few days into their journey, inside of what used to be some kind of wealthy manor, Bucky gets startled by a cat whose tail he accidentally treads on and lets out a surprised shout.

Steve knocks the front open within seconds, standing in the entryway with his guns cocked, eyes darting around for the danger.

“Fuck,” Bucky mutters, “Sorry. Just a cat.”

Steve’s so pissed, he doesn’t talk to Bucky for the rest of that day.

At first Bucky’s perplexed, even irate, but then, hours later, Steve grumbles and shoves a plate of food at him over the small fire they’ve built.

“Glad you’re okay,” he says gruffly.

“Did it take you all day to come up with that?” Bucky looks at him a little in astonishment.

Steve lets out a little offended noise, which is somewhere in between a huff and a snuffle and which Bucky finds himself horrifyingly endeared to.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says. “Eat with me.”

Steve’s look is as withering he can be, given the noise he’s just emitted, but he does find a log to sit on across from Bucky.

They’re quiet for a little, the only sounds the soft crackle of the fire, the gentle rustling of the trees behind them, and chewing noises as they eat a bowl of what amounts to bland vegetable porridge.

Then Steve looks up, features softening enough to give Bucky something close to a smile without actually being a smile. He asks Bucky something and Bucky answers, but mostly he watches the firelight pool in the blue of his eyes again, the way they crinkle at the corners sometimes when he’s trying not to smile, the way his scar twists and warps when he moves his mouth.

Bucky watches his mouth too, the shape of it, the dip of his Cupid’s bow into a full, satisfying curve. He almost sighs watching it.

“Buck,” Steve says and Bucky’s eyes flicker back up. It doesn’t escape him, the slight twist in his stomach at the name. He wonders when that started happening. “Are you paying attention?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. He sighs and pours the rest of the porridge into the fire. He doesn’t really have the stomach for it anymore. “You asked what I want, at the end of this. If we survive.”

Steve watches him carefully over the fire and Bucky ducks his head, takes a little of their water to rinse the tin bowl he stole a few days back.

“Yeah,” Steve says. He takes a spoonful of the porridge and Bucky tries not to watch him swallow.

“I don’t know,” Bucky says after a moment. “I haven’t let myself think about it, really.”

Steve tilts his head and the firelight moves with him. Suddenly, half of his face is lit, swimming under tones of yellow and orange, the rest dark.

“That doesn’t sound like you,” Steve says.

Bucky shrugs, lays the bowl among their things.

“There are things I would like,” he says. “Bits and pieces. Dreams I let go a long time ago because there was no place to keep them. So, what? I don’t know what to do with that. People think you need something to look forward to after, to do something. I don’t think that’s true.”

“What’s the truth, then?” Steve asks.

Bucky doesn’t remember how old he is anymore. Somewhere in his twenties, he thinks. Maybe in the middle, maybe at the end. Or maybe some time after that. Whatever his age, he knows what he’s lived through, what he’s lost, and what he has to look forward to. He’s older than the age his bones tell.

So his truth is something in the middle too—that there are things he breaks his bones for and they’re in his past. That’s enough for him. Sometimes, you do things because you need to.

“You just need to do it for a reason,” Bucky says. “It doesn’t have to be for something you get, after. If I survive, then I survive and hopefully everything’s better for it. I’m not doing it because of that. There’s no pay off for me, Steve. I just want to avenge my family, do something with my anger. That so wrong?”

Steve doesn’t say anything for a long time.

Bucky’s about to start packing their camp to head out when he finally looks up.

“No, Buck,” Steve says. “That’s not so wrong.”

Something in Bucky loosens, although he couldn’t say what and he couldn’t say why. He looks across the fire into the face of someone who was a stranger and who isn’t a friend, maybe, perhaps isn’t someone he can lean on to carry his weight, but is someone he’s growing to know. Maybe even someone he’s growing to trust.

This whole thing between them is something different from anything Bucky’s ever had before and that’s okay too. Maybe that’s inevitable. No one else in the whole, wrecked world knows what it means, to be on this road, except for the one person looking back at him.

“But if you could,” Steve says, quietly. “If you could have one thing, for after. What would it be?”

Bucky doesn’t have to think about it. He swallows, the grief thick in his throat.

“My sister,” he says. “Safe, in my arms. I just want to see her one more time, even if she never wants to see me again.”

Something unexpectedly soft flickers across Steve’s face. It’s nothing Bucky’s seen before, so he would miss it if he wasn’t watching so closely. It melts Steve’s features, somehow, makes him seem lifetimes younger, like a different person altogether. For a moment, that briefest of moments, Bucky misses the Steve he knows, as though this person contains multitudes and the one in his life isn’t the best one or the kindest one, but it’s the one _he_ knows. It’s his Steve.

“What about you?” Bucky asks, heart beating a little unsteadily. “If you could have one thing.”

Steve’s eyes skims Bucky’s face in a way that would be meaningful if he didn’t seem so far away, somewhere else altogether.

“Hope,” Steve says and dumps the rest of his meal into the fire. “I’d want hope.”  
  
  
It’s not entirely true that there are no checkpoints in the Eastern District, which Steve and Bucky discover almost by stumbling onto one. They nearly cross into the blockade too late and Steve’s sharp curve off the road and down the side of the hill leaves Bucky’s adrenaline spiking, his heart racing somewhere near the tight line of his jaw. He curses, his plates shifting noisily, an increased reaction to the pumping of his blood.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Steve shouts as they go crashing across a small creek, veering deeply into a field of pale yellow stalks.

They leave the bike on its side deep in the oat field and stalk their way up the hill to the edge, bodies plastered close to the ground. The road slopes down again and a bit down the stretch, the blockade is set up, not with tanks, but old black and white cars, a broken light attached to the top that doesn’t shine, but looks red under the moonlight.

Two guards stand patrol, walking back and forth between the cars, stopping anyone taking the road past them into some city Bucky has never heard of before. Columbus, the sign had said.

They let one couple on a pair of horses through and stop another in a car so old and rusted through that the missing roof looks like it’s been ripped off through brute force. The second pair they question so long, Bucky holds his breath until his ribs start hurting. That couple, too, they let through.

A third pair is more than a pair. It seems to be a family, two women and two little ones, a boy and a girl. The girl tugs on the boy’s hand as she tries to run ahead and one of the women catches them both in her arms. Their voices grow louder, although Bucky can’t hear what they’re saying. Even in the dark, across the stretch of hill, he can see the subtle movement, the guard shifting his rifle from one shoulder to the other.

Bucky doesn’t have a good feeling about it, his gut gripped by a fear he can’t place but that he instinctually recognizes is valid. The little girl has dark hair and the little boy, older than her, has dark hair too.

Bucky can feel the dread pool somewhere near the bottom of his throat. That serene blankness threatens to wash over him, struggling against his panicked need to stay present. His plates shift. He wishes he had a rifle on him.

“Bucky,” Steve says quietly, somewhere to his left.

Bucky barely hears. He knows how it goes. He knows how this will end. His tries to take in a breath and it gets tangled in his tongue. One of the women raises her voice.

He can see it before it comes, can feel the inevitable vibrate through the air. His whole body tenses and he’s almost up on his arms, trying to push himself to stand.

He would have done it, barrelled down that hill, thrown himself in front of the barrel of that gun and the soldiers, thrown everything to the bullet as it slammed into him.

But he feels a hand on his shoulder at the last moment, fingers digging into his flesh and Bucky is distracted, despite himself. He gasps and looks over, feeling distinctly unhinged, and Steve is close to him, his face an inch away and his hand goes into Bucky’s hair, his fingers at the back of Bucky’s head, his mouth on Bucky, kissing him silent as gunshots rip through the air and Bucky screams.  
  
  
He gasps into Steve’s mouth and has no real recollection of being pulled away from the scene, no real recollection of being dragged down the hill and being pushed down onto his back in the dirt.

When he finally comes back to his senses, the moon is hanging behind Steve’s head. Steve’s crouching over him, knees to either side of his hips, his hands digging into Bucky’s shoulder, his thumb leaving a gouge mark by his clavicle. Steve looks furious, his eyes cold and hard, his mouth a line so thin it’s nearly invisible. The moon illuminates his gold strands, lets a halo hang around his head.

His mouth is open; he’s breathing heavily. In fact, his chest is heaving too and Bucky notices a gash across his jaw, blood dripping slowly onto Bucky.

“Steve,” Bucky rasps out.

Steve stares at him hard for another few seconds before the ice melts behind his expression. His shoulders seem to slump and to Bucky’s surprise, his forehead falls onto the top of Bucky’s chest.

Bucky can feel Steve’s warmth over him and it grounds him, makes him come back into his body. He’s aware, distantly, that his tunic seems torn at the shoulders and he can feel a bruise forming along his neck.

Bucky doesn’t have to feel the slight tremor that runs through Steve to understand what’s happened.

“I’m sorry,” he says hoarsely, horrified. “Steve, I’m so sorry.”

He raises a hand tentatively, thinks about touching Steve’s back to comfort him, but withdraws it just as quickly. He doesn’t know if Steve wants him to touch him. He doesn’t think he’s earned that, not after—

“Fuck, Bucky,” Steve says. He lets out a breath that rattles through the entirety of his large body.

“I should have—” Bucky chokes out. “I should have warned you.”

“What was that?” Steve asks. His forehead is still against Bucky’s chest, his voice sinking into Bucky’s skin. “Your eyes went black. I only barely got you out of there.”

“I’m so sorry,” Bucky apologizes, again and again. He does reach up this time, places a hand tentatively on Steve’s back and when Steve doesn’t protest, runs down the length of it.

Steve seems to shudder and lean into him even more, so Bucky continues doing it, apologizing and soothing Steve, the movement calming for him too as his mind tries to snap back to what happened, about what he did.

He can’t remember, though.

He never can.  
  
  
They get back on the motorcycle once Steve and Bucky both stop shaking and wordlessly set off again, putting as much distance as they can between themselves and the HYDRA soldiers. Bucky’s mind buzzes with the calm aftermath of snapping into the Winter Soldier, so he doesn’t think about much, other than how much he wishes he had been able to sink two slugs into the soldiers before they left. He presses his forehead into the middle of Steve’s back and holds on close.

They cut back the way they came and Steve finds another path that takes them the far way around the outskirts of Columbus.

They don’t talk the entire time, but sometime past dawn, Steve grows tired too and they pull into another oat field, pushing stalks out of the way as they find enough of a clearing in the middle to collapse onto. It’s close enough to a creek that the running water makes soft noises in the background.

Bucky sets up camp, unpacks their bed rolls and hesitates before setting them out.

“I’m not scared of you,” Steve says, as though reading his mind. “I’ll sleep next to you.”

Bucky breathes out a sigh of relief he hadn’t realized he had been holding.

They settle down on top, the sun slowly rising above the field, the sky lightening from dark brush strokes to a paint spill of soft peaches and pinks.

Steve lays on his bed roll and Bucky lays on his and it only takes him a minute to realize he still feels sick from the aftermath of turning, the adrenaline having long left his body to the cold, sickly nausea of settling back into his human body.

“Steve,” Bucky says, turning so he can face him.

“Yeah?” Steve’s voice comes, low and a little scratchy.

“You asleep?” Bucky asks and only feels a little bad that Steve sounds as though he could have been on the verge of it.

“No,” Steve says. He turns too and then they’re facing each other on the ground, two feet apart.

“What happened?” Bucky whispers. Then, amends. “Not to me. To the family.”

The crease in between Steve’s eyebrows, always semi-present, appears, like it does every time he senses Bucky in danger.

“I’m sorry, Buck,” Steve says softly. “I didn’t see. There were two shots.”

The parents, of course. HYDRA only kills children old enough to defy them. These were just the right age to turn into soldiers.

He feels the nausea roll through him and he finds it difficult to keep his eyes open.

“Can you tell me what that was?” Steve asks and Bucky forces his eyes open again.

Bucky doesn’t want to. He distinctly does not want to.

Steve must sense this, because after a moment’s hesitation, he reaches a hand out. Tentatively, he lets his fingers hover above Bucky’s face.

Bucky swallows, his chest suddenly feeling heavy. He closes his eyes, feels the nausea spike. Steve touches him and Bucky lets him.

After a minute, the nausea starts to recede.

“I got caught,” Bucky says quietly. “At the end, that last time. My friends died. Shot through the head, mostly. Me, they kept. I had already made a reputation for myself. They knew death wouldn’t stop me. It’s easy to kill, harder to turn someone’s legacy against them. So they did what they do best.”

Something in Steve’s voice when he speaks is so mournful, Bucky finally opens his eyes. “They took you apart.”

Steve looks like he knows. It makes Bucky want to scream again, not because Steve is looking at him with pity, but because he’s looking at him as though he knows what it means to be taken apart and put back together again against his will.

“They put me back together wrong,” Bucky says and his voice catches. “They call me the Winter Soldier and that’s what they turned me into. If the Eyes hadn’t come for me first, I would have been exactly what they created me to be—a mindless, ruthless, killing machine. They would have used me against their political enemies, against anyone resisting them. They took me apart and made me into a monster, Steve.”

“No,” Steve says and his voice grows harder, even as his expression grows softer. “You’re no monster, Bucky.”

“The amount of destruction in my fingertips,” Bucky says, “is immense. I could destroy nations. I could throttle every ounce of hope this world has.”

“Is that why?” Steve asks. His hand is still soft on Bucky’s face. After a moment, his thumb moves slowly across Bucky’s jaw, all scratchy with his own rough, dark beard. The touch is so gentle, Bucky could cry, if he had the capacity to.

“Why, what?” Bucky asks.

“You’re trying to kill yourself,” Steve says.

Bucky doesn’t know what to say to that. Everything catches in his throat, a painful rock he can’t breathe around.

“I know what self destruction looks like,” Steve says. “I know what it means to hate yourself. I hate myself every day and I have to live with that. Maybe I’m a monster too. I probably am. But you’re a better person than I am, so if you’re a monster, then what am I?”

“Why?” Bucky’s able to voice. His hand finds itself to Steve’s wrist and he curls his fingers around it, firm and warm. “Why do you hate yourself?”

Steve shakes his head, almost as though he can’t do it, as though he doesn’t have it in him to bring the past out in the rising morning sun. But the sun rises and so does the warmth between them. Bucky can almost see it, the moment it breaks—Steve’s wall.

“I let everyone I know close to me down,” Steve says. “They needed me to protect them and I let them die.” 

 

*

Once upon a time, Steve tells him, before the Eyes, there was The SHIELD.

It starts much the same way it does here, with the fist of HYDRA and a band of people tired of living under tyranny. The SHIELD started in an apartment building in New Breukelen two decades ago, just after the HYDRA raids started. Steve, fifteen years old, and his mother, in an apartment building full of poor people of color, immigrants, people who refused to conform—to gender, to sexuality, to anything HYDRA shilled as “normal.” They were the bottom of society as society deemed it and it was hard enough to survive, but there was heart in a way there was nowhere else. Take away everything else and maybe fighting spirit was all that was left to people like that; people like them.

Steve grew up happy enough, loved enough, a gal down the hallway with bright red lips and brown curls always on his mind, his Ma’s cough sometimes worrying him, but enough of an education to understand how to find something to do to help. They all worked, everyone in their complex, because without work, there was no survival. This was the dying, last gasp stages of late capitalism. Do or die and often people died, so Steve did.

It was only a matter of time before the raids hit their Anarcho-Marxist, poor, colorful, non-conforming block, and when it did it was in the form of a raze.

HYDRA smoked everyone out, burned down every building in a two mile radius.

Steve remembers that day vividly, in the way that people remember the day that tears their life apart. He remembers coming home from work and seeing the whole apartment up in flames. He remembers screaming, trying to get into the building, bursting through a wooden door burning to the touch. He gets up the stairs, battling fire and smoke inhalation. He gets to their apartment door. He shoves it open. His mother is inside, coughing, screaming, telling him to get out.

He tries to get to her.

He really fucking tries.

The fire licks up the sides, the walls buckling under their ruined integrity. The beam falls between them before he can get to her and everything sparks brighter. Sarah Rogers’ last words to her son are _Get out!_  
  
  
He’s torn into fucking pieces, unmade and remade, and it’s only a hand on his shoulder that saves him from first degree burns and a black lung from smoke inhalation.

“We have to go,” a warm, urgent voice says in his ear.

Peggy Carter saves him that day and sometimes, Steve wishes she hadn’t.  
  
  
Well, what’s a group of furious, heartbroken, shattered young persons to do?

Peggy grabs Steve by the shoulders, nails digging in, looks into his face and says, “This stops now, Steve. Do you understand? We stop this now.”  
  
  
They find others—Hope Pym and Howard Stark and Eli Bradley and a handful more, all young, all non-conforming or of color or immigrant or poor or just spitting angry and they form the first wave of the Resistance. 

 

*

“As long as there’s tyranny, there’s always going to be people around to fight back, Buck,” Steve says, but he sounds so broken that Bucky doesn’t know what to do.

He considers it, kissing him the way Steve had kissed him, but it doesn’t feel right.

Instead, he returns the favor, a hand at Steve’s elbow, sliding up his arm and down his back, moving soothing circles into his side as Steve breathes into him.

 

*

They subvert HYDRA, or they try.

They build momentum, build a movement, attack HYDRA where they’re building their own supporters, blow up caches of weapons where they’re gathering them.

They march in the open. They riot. They make it unlivable for fledgling fascists.

They fuck up HYDRA and HYDRA fucks them up back.

In the end, though, it was one assignment too many or maybe it was one person too many.

It was a mission gone wrong, one last hand on his shoulder, one last kiss before she went in.

“I’ll be right back,” she promises and he lets her.

Steve should have gone in instead. He should have left Peggy out to keep watch. He nods off, maybe, or he doesn’t hear it.

It’s an ambush.

Everyone inside the safe house is slaughtered, the building going up in flames, and he manages to stumble away, whole and unbroken, but broken too, in ways that splinter only inside.

Only Steve is left of The SHIELD.

It’s not so much a shield anymore, then.

It’s just him, and he’s not worth much without everyone else.

 

*

“Is that why you look so sad all the time?” Bucky asks. He turns his body closer and Steve responds, hesitates and then rolls under Bucky’s outstretched arm.

“I don’t know what I look like,” Steve says. “I just know what I did. And I know I can never undo it.”

Bucky strokes his back and Steve tucks his head under Bucky’s chin. They shouldn’t fit together like this. It’s patently absurd that they should be able to. But here, under the morning sun, in a field of oat stalks, Steve’s enormous body slots into Bucky’s as though he was meant to be there.

Bucky doesn’t believe in fate, but he does believe in the present.

“We’ll fix it,” Bucky says, even though he can’t promise any such thing. “Take me to the Citadel, Steve. Together, we’ll fix all of it.”

He doesn’t know if he can promise that either, but he does know that there’s not much more that the world can take from the two of them. They both have debts to pay, the two of them, and maybe that’s why they’re always here, on the knife’s edge. Maybe that’s why Bucky feels like moving Steve back, stroking a hand into hair, and finding out what his mouth tastes like. He wonders if it tastes like the desperation he feels, or if it’s something different, something sharp and overwhelming, like Steve standing over him in the midday sun.

If he thought they had the time for it, if they had any more hope left for them both, separately and together, maybe he’d even do it.

Maybe he’d roll Steve onto his back, take him out of his clothes and let them figure out a way to take each other apart and put each other back together again instead.

He wants to feel Steve’s skin slick against his, Steve’s hands pressing into him, leaving bruises to let him know they’re still alive. He’s never ached to do it before, not for these reasons, and not so terribly much, when everything is fire and ash around him.

But that’s the crux of it all, isn’t it?

He doesn’t think there’s hope here, not really. And there’s certainly no time.

So, instead, he holds Steve close and breathes him in and wonders long into the morning, what monsters are made of and whether they can ever be made happy.

 

*

_hiding from the truth ain't gonna make this all okay_  
_i'll see your pain if you don't feel our grace_  
_and you've lost your way_  
_i will leave the light on_  
[leave a light on; tom walker](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqnkBdExjws)

 

 

*

  
  
_picture: cover albums for Worn Out Places; a Playlist; cover art and playlist by witchylurker_

**[Worn Out Places; a Playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4zfNRc2Z6qw9BbtQTVKk_i0EeCwwJqF5) (YouTube) by witchylurker**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey, where did all of these feelings come from? 
> 
> Check out the amazing playlist + cover art by witchylurker! Retweet the playlist [here](https://twitter.com/Witchylurker/status/1099021412998606848) or reblog it on Tumblr [here](https://witchylurker.tumblr.com/post/182984970336/its-a-city-of-nothing-held-together-by-belief)!
> 
> If you have thoughts + feelings, would love to hear them! :)


	7. new breukelen; eastern district.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Ready to go home, Rogers?" Bucky asks quietly.
> 
> "No," Steve says and Bucky believes him. It's a hard thing, to step back into the place your heart broke. "But that doesn't really matter. Home's waiting whether we want it to or not."

_when it feels like the world's gone mad_  
_and there's nothing you can do about it_  
_no there's nothing you can do about it_

 

 

 

*

**new breukelen; eastern district.**

Everything doesn’t just change after that, it’s not that simple, but things change enough, in a way that Bucky finds hard to define.

They wake up with the sun still high in the sky, Bucky’s arm still around Steve, Steve’s beard scratching into Bucky’s clavicle. The skin is pink and definitely a little raw there, although Bucky doesn’t particularly mind. He hasn’t slept without tossing or turning miserably in longer than he can remember, so mostly he’s caught off guard.

He shifts, letting out a little groan and it’s only then that he notices a problem he hasn’t had in a while.

“Want me to take care of that for you?” Steve mumbles somewhere in the region of Bucky’s throat and Bucky’s brain short circuits just long enough to bypass embarrassment entirely.

“Who’s gonna take care of yours then, sugar?” Bucky manages after a moment of actually imagining Steve jerking him off. It is, horrifyingly, not a horrifying thought, but one they don’t have time for. He tucks away the idea to examine another time.

Anyway, he can feel Steve’s wood press up against his thigh too, which makes him feel somewhat better.

“Sorry,” Steve yawns and then rolls onto his back. “Shoulda bought you dinner first.”

Bucky snorts, mourning the loss of Steve’s furnace of warmth as he sits up with a slight shiver. He doesn’t know what month it is anymore, but he thinks it’s late enough in the year, that time when the days get dark fast and the chill appears in the middle of the night and sinks into his bones until halfway through the day.

“We’re cutting it close,” Bucky says. “Feels like we’ve been on the road for months.”

Steve stands up and stretches and Bucky looks up at him, eyes skimming over the strip of skin exposed as Steve’s shirt rides up.

“We’ll make it,” Steve says. “We have two days left.”

“I don’t know where we are anymore,” Bucky admits, dragging his eyes away and pulling himself up. He sighs as his back pops and starts to pick up his bedroll.

“I think it used to be called Ohio,” Steve murmurs. “Just gotta cross over, then it’ll be a day away. You good to ride?”

“My ass is gonna complain,” Bucky grumbles, not looking forward to another two days on that hard seat.

“Your ass doesn’t really have a choice,” Steve says, with no apology.

“Stop looking at my ass, Rogers,” Bucky says. He tucks the bed roll under his arm and squints at Steve.

"A man can't admire the view?" Steve asks and starts picking up his bedding too.

"It's not landscape, pal," Bucky replies. It's not lost on him, the number of times his ass comes up as a topic of discussion and as long as he's not getting any, he figures he can at least enjoy the attention. "Nothing free in HYDRA's America. Pay per view."

"I'll keep that in mind," Steve says, raising an eyebrow and Bucky, well, he gets a strange feeling that Steve's not being entirely facetious.  
  
  
It takes them less than five minutes to make sure everything is packed away onto the bike. Steve makes sure that Bucky gets something to eat and Bucky makes sure that they take the opportunity to wash some of the days on the road off of their faces.

The creek is small and the water a little murkier than ideal, but beggars can't be choosers and, looking at his reflection in the shallow water, Bucky knows he looks more like a beggar than a chooser.

"If you want to get in, we can spare ten minutes," Steve says, splashing water across his face. The droplets slide through the grime, leaving streaks down his otherwise stupidly handsome features. The water catches on his beard, glinting under the late afternoon sun.

It's a stupid idea and they definitely don't have time for it, but after everything earlier, Bucky feels uncomfortable, a stranger in his own skin. He feels like this sometimes after he becomes the Winter Soldier, swimming in a slightly dissociative state, where he's neither really Bucky nor the Soldier. Everything around him seems a little too bright, the sounds a little too loud. Steve looks like he's been put through the wringer too and perhaps he has, at that.

"Ten minutes," Bucky says, against his better judgment. "If you get in with me."

Steve seems troubled for all of half a second before he gives Bucky half a smile.

"Ten minutes," he says.  
  
  
It really is only ten minutes, but it seems to crawl under Bucky's skin, find the space where his heart’s been shocked frozen and starts to help it thaw. He peels his shirt off and watches Steve peel his shirt off too.

There's nowhere to hide the fact that he's staring, but the afternoon sun is high in the sky, covering the field and the two people in it with ripples of gold and peach. Bucky feels his own skin warm under the hazy air and he sees Steve's pale skin turn pink with it. Bucky can see all of it clearer now, the scars roped across the top of his body and the hard layers of muscle underneath.

Maybe this was a mistake, he thinks as his throat dries, his own stomach wavering, clenching tight. He feels it prickle under him again, that desperate itch, the need to run his fingers over what Steve has left out for him, to test the curves and the dips, and taste the salt and dirt on his skin.

If Steve sees him looking, he doesn't comment on it.

"Gonna be hard with our pants on," Steve says, catching Bucky's eyes.

"Just ten minutes," Bucky says, not shying away.

"Eight now," Steve smiles.

Bucky wordlessly pushes his pants and his underwear to the ground. He doesn't wait to see if Steve is watching or not. He walks into the water and after a moment, Steve walks in behind him.

Unlike the Missouri River, this creek, whatever it is, is barely deep enough to go past their waists. Bucky stands in the middle of the water, looking down and trying to spot his feet through the sandy murk. He can't really see anything, although he feels small fish nibbling at his toes and sand and rocks swirling around them.

"Can't remember the last time I went swimming in a creek," Steve says, somewhere behind him. “Must have been a kid.”

Bucky looks up and turns around and is unintentionally warmed by Steve doing exactly what he had been doing just a second before. Bucky takes the opportunity to look again and it's undeniable this time, the way he hungrily takes in the hard lines of Steve's body and the curls of blond at his chest, the swelling slopes of his biceps, and the way the muscles in his torso seem to cut into a sharp v that leads underwater and—

"Who's looking without paying now?" Steve asks, startling Bucky out of his thoughts.

"Shit," Bucky mumbles out before he can stop himself and Steve laughs, loud and clear into the clearing between them. It’s not mocking at all. It’s warm.

"If you're trying to hide it, you're not doing a great job," Steve says. Luckily, he sounds amused, although Bucky supposes he wouldn't care if he sounded any other way either. At the end of the world, Bucky's going to say when he wants something, even if he can't have it.

"Not trying to hide it," Bucky says and unfortunately his stomach agrees. His gut twists with feeling, the low pang of a hunger only one thing can satisfy. His skin buzzes with it, his head stuffed with electric cotton.

Steve smiles at that, like actually smiles, his face softening under the look. It doesn't really reach his eyes, which are the kind of blue that Bucky could lose lifetimes to tracing. No, his eyes, they look sad. Steve's eyes always look sad, Bucky thinks.

He could take a step closer, but he doesn't.

"Even after everything I told you?" Steve asks, hesitating. "Even knowing all that?"

Bucky—he swallows. He lets out a breath harshly, as though it's been punched out of him. He runs a hand through the water and then runs it through his hair. It's gotten so long it's well past his shoulders now, shaggy and a bit untamed.

"Shit," Bucky breathes out again, the curse not costing him anything more than a moment of self awareness. "I don't know, Steve. I don't know what we're doing here and I don't know what we're going to be doing, but I know the world ain't fucking black and white. I don't know why you think that matters to me. It's not worth it to me to blame you for anything I couldn't be blamed for myself."

Steve shifts and the water ripples around him.

"It's a past," Steve says. "It's my past. But I did it, all of it. If anyone's to blame, if anyone's a monster, it's me."

"What are you talking about?" Bucky asks, annoyed. "Everyone has a past. I have a past too. I carry my past around with me every day. I have to hear it every time my plates shift. I have to think about it every time I can't sleep through the night or something startles me, thinking I'll snap at a moment’s notice, turn into what they made me to be—"

"You can't sleep?" Steve asks, surprised, because that, of course, is the only thing the idiot takes from what Bucky's said.

"Not usually," Bucky says, rolling a shoulder. "You're missing the point."

This time, Steve's the one who runs a hand through his hair. His hair's growing long too, his beard bushier than it was when they first met. He kind of looks like a hot, rugged lumberjack, one who drives Bucky insane.

"I want you to know," Steve says. "I was a different person once. A better person. It wasn't all fifty shades of doom and gloom. I used to know how to be a human."

"You and me both, pal," Bucky says, giving Steve a wry smile. Then it fades. He looks down at his hands, calloused from a life of physical brutality, a long scar running from the bottom of his wrist to the top, pale and pink. "We both have the scars to prove what we’ve done, nothing’s gonna take that from us. But, I don't care who you were. I didn't know that person. He's a stranger to me."

"And I'm not?" Steve asks, curiously.

Bucky lets out a puff of a laugh.

"Steve Rogers," Bucky says, as though he's reading off a cue card. "Mysterious coyote. Blond, rugged, I guess, plays cynical and jaded because of a dark and broody past he's only just come out and said. Not the darkest or bloodiest past, even among present company. Thinks he's real hard to read, but he's more of an open book than he realizes."

"Bucky," Steve says, as though he doesn't believe him and Bucky makes a little interrupting noise.

"Couldn't shoot a house from ten yards away, but could smuggle you across half the country and charm most of the barmaids in most of the taverns in two out of three districts even without smiling," Bucky grins. "You're a stubborn pain in the ass, but you notice shit I don't expect you to, like when I’m getting cold at night or that bumps in the road really jar me."

"You jump every time," Steve mutters. His cheeks are warming, which Bucky can see visibly.

"You eat things even when you hate them, and I don't just mean chicken pot pie," Bucky says. "You hate onions, you wince every time you taste one. But you swallow anyway. You make sure I'm okay and safe before you check for yourself. You call me reckless and impulsive, but you are too. Probably throw yourself on a grenade to save a kid and then grumble after that nothing means anything, because you’re also an annoying pain in the ass. But you're loyal too. You're not quiet because you have nothing to say, I can basically see your brain churning every time I look at you. You're quiet because if you open your mouth, you're afraid you won't be able to stop."

Bucky feels like swaying on his feet and Steve, for his part, looks like it too.

"You sound like you think you know me pretty well, for a stranger," Steve says. His voice is quiet, almost hoarse. He sounds like someone whose wounded heart would break if he thought about it twice.

"We're not strangers anymore, Steve," Bucky says quietly. “Kinda think that’s the point.”

The space between him and Steve isn't so large after all, physically or metaphorically.

"No," Steve says softly. "I guess we're not."

Bucky sighs and splashes the water in front of him with his flesh hand.

"I don't care who you were before," he says again. "Or, I do, but it doesn't matter to me. That's someone else's Steve. My Steve is an annoying jackass who thinks he's slick and is grumpier than any octogenarian I've ever met."

"How many octogenarians have you met?" Steve asks, like the jackass he is.

Bucky groans and splashes water at him. Only half of the water hits Steve's chest, sliding down the expanse of it, Bucky adamantly not watching the rivulets make their way toward that slope.

"Just you, asshole," Bucky says and Steve laughs again, that rich, warm sound that soothes some ache in Bucky's chest he wasn't aware he was carrying.

Steve sighs.

"Eleven minutes," he says.

"Way more than that," Bucky snorts. "Let's get wet and leave."

Steve agrees and they spend a quick minute or two running the creek water over their bodies. They don't get as clean as desired, but they get clean enough and Bucky almost feels like a new person as he turns to climb out of the creek.

"Bucky," Steve says, stopping him short.

"Yeah?" Bucky turns and Steve's wet hand is on his shoulder. He comes to a standstill, Steve not quite pressed to his back, but close enough that Bucky feels the heat off of him.

"It's been a long time since anyone's thought about me twice," Steve says quietly. "Not just in that way. In any way."

Bucky takes in a shaky breath. His shoulder feels like it's going to burn under Steve's touch.

"You make me want to be a better person," Steve says. "I want you to know that. It's been—well, a long fucking time since I've wanted to be that."

"Don't," Bucky says, maybe too harshly. Then he exhales, shaking his head. "I'm not a fuckin’ role model, Steve. I don't want to be someone's reason to be better. I don't want to be anything."

"I know," Steve says. "I'm not making you anything you're not.” A pause, then, “I'd miss you too. If you were a different Bucky than the one I know."

That makes everything in Bucky sharpen a little, the colors and feelings in his head. He bites his lower lip and turns then, to look at Steve.

"Really? Me?" he asks.

Maybe Steve’s not the only one looking for redemption.

Steve smiles and Bucky thinks he's already memorized the curve of it, the way it curls up at the corners.

"Yeah, Buck," Steve says. "You."

It feels destabilizing, the weight of everything he feels that day, under the late afternoon sky, water dripping down his front and his back. He has this person in front of him and this task ahead, and all he wants is to stop his heart from beating out of his chest.

Steve tips his head back to look up at a bird as it startles above them and Bucky doesn't watch the bird, or the sky, he watches Steve's impossibly long eyelashes cast a shadow on his high cheekbones.

Bucky presses a hand to his chest, just above the chamber of his heart, and he feels it beat, faster and faster, telling him things he already knows and some things he doesn't want to hear.  
  
  
"Ready, sweetheart?" Steve asks at the motorcycle.

"Two days," Bucky says.

He climbs onto the bike after Steve, wraps his arms around his waist, presses in close, and closes his eyes.  
  
  
The next two days go by in starts and stops, sleeping down the sides of slopes and in the middle of fields, driving through most of the night and part of the early morning, and putting their bed rolls out when their bodies start aching too much to stay on the bike. They don't push their bed rolls together after the one night, but it doesn't stop Bucky from angling his body toward Steve and it doesn't stop Steve from looking up at the sky above them, tracing smudges of clouds with his thumb and then laying his hand to his side after.

They don't talk about it, the rise and fall of their breathing, one chest rising and the other falling, but Bucky finds his fingers slipping into a rough hand, the calloused ridges hard against the pads of his own.

The first time it's uncertain, a tentative touch he doesn't know if he's allowed. But as his heart moves unsteadily in his chest, Steve's fingers curl over his own, their fingers intertwined together, and Steve angles his body towards Bucky as well.

They say nothing, reading what's unsaid in one another's expressions and fall asleep, the sun always high in the sky, slowly warming the air around and between them.  
  
  
"Just on time," Steve says as they cross the last stretch of road by the fading light of the early morning moon. The sky is softening in places, the dark, cold black above them fading at intervals to something that's not quite white and not quite peach.

They ride out the rising sun together until Steve stops them a mile outside of what is clearly the boundaries of a city.

It's not as large as it once was, maybe, the buildings crumbling under the weight of age and the sheer destruction humans can cause. That's what makes it incomprehensibly beautiful, though, that even under the canvas of disintegration, a century of decomposition, Bucky can look up at the outlines of that skyline and feel it reverberate in a chamber in his heart.

"Does it look the same to you?" Steve asks. He's standing next to Bucky, looking up at the same thing, the shadows of old skyscrapers reflected in his eyes. Bucky can see the memory on his brows, the way he breathes it in, but forgets to exhale.

"Yeah," Bucky says. "And no. I haven't seen her in a long time."

"Me neither," Steve says. "A long, long time."

Bucky tries to think of what it could have been like, growing up in the city with someone like Steve. They're around the same age, maybe a difference of a few years, taken here or there. Maybe they grew up on the same streets, maybe they were adjacent and never knew.

"We could have passed each other a dozen times and never known," Bucky muses out loud. "Maybe I met you at the grocery one day, or your Ma and my Ma were friends. They met at the hospital, back when those still existed. My son's been fighting again, Winifred, your mom would say to mine."

Steve gives Bucky a tight, shadow of a smile.

"Mine's been telling tall tales again, your mom would say in return," Steve says. "Can't get him to stop talking. Got big dreams, that one. A dying world and big dreams to spare."

Bucky laughs at that, the hurt caught low in his chest. He wonders if it could have been true; if in another world, he and Steve could have met, grown up together. Maybe they would have found out early on that they wanted to be together or maybe they never would have got there. Maybe they would have been friends all the same, best friends, confidants and partners in crime.

Bucky hasn't had a confidant or a partner in crime in a long time. He thinks the last of them died when he got captured.

"You think we woulda liked each other?" Bucky asks. "If we'd have met."

"Don't know," Steve says with a slight shrug. "I guess I wasn't the easiest person to be around. I made friends, but I didn't always keep them."

"Yeah, that's a lot different from now," Bucky smirks. He shakes his head with a smile, though, aching around the edges. Somehow, in the meantime Steve's hand has ended up in his own, fingers curled around each other, large, rough hand in large rough hand. Bucky's started to memorize the shape of Steve's hand, despite himself, the feel of his palm, firm and warm against his own. He wants to pick it up, press it against his heart.

He wants a lot of things he'll never have.

"Ready to go home, Rogers?" Bucky asks quietly.

"No," Steve says and Bucky believes him. It's a hard thing, to step back into the place your heart broke. "But that doesn't really matter. Home's waiting whether we want it to or not."  
  
  
It's halfway true anyway. Half of New Breukelen is shuttered, falling into disrepair and half of it is more vibrant than Bucky remembers it being. He doesn't know what wave of the raids came for his home, but he knows his neighborhood didn't get razed. He wants to go back and he doesn't. He thinks if he sees his house ever again, it will end him entirely.

They leave the motorcycle outside of the city, Steve ripping wires out, Bucky puncturing the tires. Together, they heave it to the top of a small slope and push.

Bucky watches it fall sadly. No more excuses to press himself up again Steve anymore. Everything from here on was a race against the clock. Whatever the Eyes were going to do, it wasn't going to be quiet. They had one shot, T'Challa had told him and Steve. Once everything went up in a flash, the Resistance would be in the open, like an exposed vein. HYDRA would know everything.

Unto the breach, he thinks to himself and he and Steve slip past the borders of the city and make their way in.  
  
  
There's no open pocket of Resistance anywhere—HYDRA had made sure to drive any rebellion underground--so there was no way of knowing who or what people would recognize them for. Bucky and Steve slip through streets, turn corners and tuck themselves behind buildings. They realize people are watching them precisely because they're trying not to be watched. Their inconspicuousness makes them stand out like a sore thumb.

A woman gives Steve an appraising look as they both emerge from a darkened alley and a child skitters away from them, taking one look and running. People are tense, of course, and that's half of the problem. Bucky grabs Steve's wrist as he tries to turn down another alleyway.

"Steve," he says. "This isn't working. We're being too obvious."

"I don't have an invisibility cloak," Steve mutters with frustration. He runs a hand through his hair, gives a little grunt of exasperation, which is how Bucky knows he's not taking this well.

"We're going about this wrong," Bucky says.

Steve frowns and Bucky turns him, tugs him closer.

"What are you—"

Bucky makes quick work of the idea forming in his head. Steve looks like he's come traveling from a long way away. He needs to look as though he's stumbled out of an alley after getting his dick thoroughly sucked.

He pushes Steve's sleeves up, exposing a strip of forearm that he catalogs in his mind to examine later. He reaches up, loosens the shawl around Steve's neck, rakes his shirt up slightly, and cards his hand through Steve's hair.

Steve doesn't say anything, but his eyes do widen, his breathing picking up just a tick, not enough to be really noticeable by anyone not a mere two inches away from him.

"Kiss me," Bucky instructs.

"What?" Steve sputters. Considering he looks like a big, hairy, blond bear, Bucky is unclear how he still manages to turn pink, but he sees the flush crawl up the back of his neck.

"Steve, we're not fugitives here," Bucky says. "We start acting like a pair of them and people will notice. So we gotta make them believe what we want them to believe."

"And that is—?" Steve asks, his eyes dipping to Bucky's mouth regardless.

"That we're married, sugar," Bucky says, slowing the cadence of his words. He adds in a drawl, lets a lazy smirk crawl across his face. He curls his fingers into the front of Steve's shirt and pulls him closer.

Steve's hands immediately go to his hips and Bucky is thrilled at how large they feel there, the firm pressure he applies that makes Bucky's heart race a little faster.

"I think you keep forgettin'," Bucky whispers. "But I got a weddin' ring on my finger says otherwise. We keep sharing beds. Our Ma's even knew each other. Kinda think my own goddamned husband doesn't want people knowing we're married."

"That so?" Steve breathes out. He's so close Bucky can feel the warmth of his breath cascade across his skin. He swallows the shiver that threatens to crawl up his spine. Steve must know, because he moves a hand onto Bucky's lower back and Bucky swears if they weren't in public, he'd slip that hand under Bucky's shirt, let him feel that palm against the scars on his skin. It burns where Steve presses against him.

"Yasha's feelin' a little neglected," Bucky says.

Around them, Bucky can feel people move, crossing the street, walking past them. Some people watch—it's unsurprising to feel eyes bore into the back of his head. It's inevitable, maybe, some people are always gonna want to watch what they can't have.

It's what makes them invisible, in this world. One person's a threat, but two people, together, are nothing to pay attention to. It's ironic, in a way.

Bucky can feel something hard against his leg and he knows it's not Steve's dick, it's his gun. The two of them could take out half a city block, but no one would know it until they did it, because Steve's hand is on Bucky's back and Bucky's palm is pressed to Steve's neck.

"Kiss me, sweetheart," Bucky breathes out and Steve, well he does.  
  
  
It's supposed to be distraction, a cover to prove how very, terribly married they are, but Bucky knows it's a mistake almost as soon as Steve's mouth touches his own. He gasps into it, electricity slamming up and down his spine. It sinks into his blood, his hunger making a keening sound that Steve swallows. Steve presses his mouth harder against Bucky, his fingers digging into the base of his lower back. His other hand presses harder into his hip.

Bucky's breath comes up short, and Steve coaxes that out of him too, prying Bucky's mouth open, sliding his tongue against Bucky's own. Steve's tongue is against the roof of Bucky's mouth and Bucky makes another noise that Steve swallows. It hits him in the gut, the noises he keeps making and the way Steve eats them up.

He feels like he's on fire now, every move of Steve's tongue hot in his mouth, every shift of his beard against his own scratchy, and soft. Bucky grips Steve's neck a little tighter and a sound rushes out of Steve too, one that goes to Bucky's head, makes his vision spin.

Bucky hasn't felt like this in a long time, his stomach lit with desire, an ache so deep he tries not to shiver from it.

"Fuck," Steve groans and forcibly breaks the kiss.

Bucky tries to chase after him, but Steve stops him, tights the hand at his hip in warning.

"Later," Steve says, voice so nearly wrecked that Bucky almost drags him back to him. Steve presses another kiss to the side of Bucky's mouth and he whines, despite himself. "Promise."

It runs through him like a heat wave, the weight of that promise. This is stupid and they're being stupid, but Bucky can't remember the last time what he wanted was this truly ill-advised.

So he does what any stupid, suicidal, selfish bastard does and he presses his mouth to Steve's ear.

"See what happens if you don't," he says and, swallowing, steps away.

The two of them are breathing harder for it, faces pink, eyes still dark, business unfinished, but it's undoubtedly time to go.

And they know it's time to go, because as soon as Steve slips his hand into Bucky's and turns to leave, they both hear a voice behind them say, with perfect incredulity, "Steve?"  
  
  
In the time they've known each other, Steve had never given Bucky any indication that there was anyone left alive who still knew him. Bucky supposes now, turning around and looking dead into the eyes of a dark man with a fucking _sheriff's_ badge on his chest, that it had been a naive assumption.

No one is capable of leaving the past behind completely.

Not even a six foot something coyote with the emotional capacity of a thimble who's been running from it for years.

It doesn't stop Bucky from tensing, his hand sliding to the knife hidden inside his sleeve. Before Bucky can get any sort of sense of the threat this man poses, Steve startles out of his reverie.

"Holy shit," he says. "Sam?"

"It is you, you son of a bitch," the sheriff—Sam, says. He looks over Steve with surprised, appraising eyes, a hand clapped to Steve's shoulder, the other on his arm. Bucky is—startled, to say the least. Steve, who is tight as a taut string almost every minute of the day, doesn't even flinch. He doesn't seem surprised. Hell, he doesn't even move a way.

"What the fuck?" Steve says—and this surprises Bucky too—with a broad, genuine smile on his face. Steve presses a hand to Sam's shoulder and bicep in return and they take turns looking at one another in a way that's too familiar to be confused for acquaintances.

"Are you shitting me?" Sam says and he's grinning back. "You _son of a bitch_. I should throw your delinquent ass in jail."

Bucky tenses again, but Steve—Jesus fuck, Steve throws his head back a little and laughs. His throat bobs up and down and Bucky stares, mesmerized, before he snaps himself out of it. He feels a stab of annoyance that is not entirely dissimilar to jealousy.

"For what, not writing?" Steve grins.

"For not writing, he says," Sam says with a good-natured scowl. "This actual son of a bitch runs out on three different warrants, says he'll call, definitely says he'll write, disappears for three years, and now here he is looking like the lost soul of John Wayne."

"Who the fuck is John Wayne?" Steve asks.

"Former low-life, just like you, you dick," Sam says.

"Who said anything about former?” Steve says and fuck, he grins again, and Bucky can't help the frustrated growl that gets stuck in his throat. It's only then that Steve blinks, as though startled again, and both of them look to Bucky.

"Yeah, still here," Bucky says, not entirely able to keep how grumpy he feels out of his voice.

"Who's this?" Sam asks, raising an eyebrow. "Never knew you to travel with anyone, Rogers."

Steve raises a shoulder in shrug.

"Things change," he says and it's only then that Sam, eyes flickering over Steve and Bucky, notices the matching glint on both of their hands.

"Holy shit," Sam says with a low whistle and wide eyes, staring from Steve to Bucky and back to Steve. "Tell me I'm seeing shit. Tell me I've had one too long a shift in this miserable town and now I'm hallucinating."

"Hi," Bucky says with a fake smile, all teeth and no warmth. He offers his metal hand, flesh covering on it, wedding band nestled onto his ring finger. "Yasha. Steve's husband."

When Sam looks at Bucky, he can't seem to keep the skepticism off his face, but that doesn't stop him from taking Bucky's hand.

"Sam Wilson," he says. "Sheriff and best friend to this asshole."

Bucky tries not to frown as they shake.

"Sam," Steve says and Bucky feels a soft swoop gratitude for him as he presses a hand against Bucky's lower back. It makes him feel momentarily less on edge or maybe slightly less irrationally insane, to have Steve close to him.

"Steve," Sam says and his demeanor shifts. It's no less warm or any more closed off, but there's a wall of professionalism that slots into place. The sun bounces off the sheriff's badge on his chest. "It's not safe here. Anyone else recognize you and they'll throw you to the dogs so fast you won't have time to get your pants back up."

Steve exhales and nods.

"You got someplace safe for us?" he asks. His fingers dig into Bucky's back, which is how Bucky knows he's feeling the tension.

"Yeah," Sam nods. "You better come with me. But first, I gotta arrest you."  
  
  
Bucky hates the feeling of handcuffs against his wrists. They dig into his flesh hand and compromise the integrity of his flesh hand covering, binding his arms at an awkward angle behind him.

"Are you sure we can trust him?" Bucky hisses to Steve as they get led to the back of a car so old, with paint so chipped and rusted, that it doesn't look too different from those patrol cars they saw at the border of Columbus. It makes Bucky's paranoia peak, his anxiety pump aggressively through his body. His every sense is standing on end. It doesn't make him more likely to trust Sam.

"I'd trust him with my life," Steve murmurs. Sam opens the driver's door and slides in and Bucky swallows a mouthful of ire and bitterness.

He doesn't have time to be fake arrested by Steve's former best friend or whatever the fuck he is.

"Where are we going, Sam?" Steve asks.

Outside, a couple of people try to look into the car, but most avert their eyes. No one wants to bring any trouble to themselves, not when trouble's always the first step to something more.

"The station," Sam says and puts the car into reverse. He looks behind him and Bucky's face must be as stormy as he feels, because Sam just raises an eyebrow and turns back around. "It's one of the safest places in the city. Trust me."

"Okay," Steve agrees, although Bucky himself isn't quite so quick to feel the same. "You gonna tell me how a sorry son of a bitch like you became sheriff of a place like this?"

Sam gives both of them a thin smile in the grimy rearview mirror.

"That's gonna take longer than a morning," Sam says. "And a hell of a lot to drink."

"Wouldn't say no to a drink," Steve says.

"Wouldn't say no to five," Bucky mutters.

He fidgets, trying to shift his wrists in the handcuffs, his fingers tangling clumsily together. Sam drives them through the worn streets of New Breukelen and his anxiety only plateaus when Steve, noticing, presses his knee against Bucky’s own. It’s only a slight touch, but for some reason, makes it easier for him to breathe.  
  
  
The station is in the shell of a building that used to be an old police station. It’s all cracking grey stone, with reinforced glass, bars in the windows, and a plaque that says “The Precinct” embedded into the foundation.

“Doesn’t feel right trusting the cops,” Bucky mutters to Steve as Sam let’s them out of the car, opens the doors of the station to them.

“It’s not the cops, it’s Sam,” Steve mutters, like that’s supposed to mean something to Bucky.

Bucky’s growing so wary of the situation he almost snaps at Steve to stop being a naïve asshole, but at the last moment bites his tongue. He’s in a station of cops, almost all of whom must have been put there by HYDRA or, at least, support the regime and it’s not worth it to him or the disc to goad a host of vipers when he’s in their nest.

Instead, he glares daggers into the back of Steve’s neck as he walks in front of him.

“Sheriff,” a blonde with a kind face smiles up at them. “You were supposed to take the day off.”

“Hooligans wait for no one, Karen,” Sam smiles at her. “Caught these two—”

“Making out?” Bucky mutters.

“—causing trouble,” Sam says, ignoring Bucky. “Hey, is the special holding cell empty?”

Karen raises an eyebrow slightly for this and turns to Steve and Bucky.

"If the Sheriff's taking you to the holding cell, you must have done something terrible," she says, which contradicts entirely the smile she gives them. There's some kind of a sign in book in front of her that she looks at, finger skimming the first page. "No one's in there, Sam. How long do you need?"

Sam gives Steve a sidelong look.

"A while," he says. "Block out the whole day."

"Got it," Karen writes it down. Then she reaches under her desk, rummages for something, and pulls out a pair of keys. "Don't lock yourself in there again."

"That was one time!" Sam complains and takes it. "Thanks. All right, you two. Follow me."

If this is how Sam runs the town, it's no wonder it's falling into disrepair as it is. Steve shuffles after him down the hall and after a look around them, Bucky follows Steve. Karen watches them go quietly and Bucky almost tells her to blink twice if she's being held hostage.  
  
  
Steve and Sam talk ahead of him, in tones that aren't loud enough to carry, so Bucky's left to fester in his own confusion and suspicion while he takes in their surroundings. The deeper they go into the station, the more tense he gets, the halls are so colorless and the walls so thick. He looks through plexiglass into rooms that are just as grey, with heavy wooden tables and wooden chairs with black backs. In one or two rooms, there's someone in handcuffs, and in one, there are two, a cop and his victim. There's no HYDRA insignia on the cop, but Bucky cringes away from the sight, almost certain that if he looks close enough, he'll see the red skull and many arms staring back at him.

"In here," Sam says and takes the keys to a door that's twice as thick as the rest, which, when opened, reveals another door made of bars reaching from nearly ceiling to ground. There's no plexiglass here. It's clear this is the room reserved for special criminals, probably soundproof and reinforced to hide any echoing screams or shouts.

Steve doesn't seem to think this is at all ominous and Bucky promises himself that if they make it out of this alive, he's going to fucking kill Steve himself.

Despite every instinct screaming otherwise, Bucky follows the two of them in and Sam locks both doors behind them. Bucky's positive there's no out of this now without killing a station of pigs, but he's enough on edge to do it, just give him the right gun.

"Relax, Yasha," Sam says. "You're stressing me out."

Bucky turns from the doors to Sam, so pissed he can barely think straight.

"You got us in a padded room with no information and I'm supposed to relax?" he says through gritted teeth. "Get me out of these fucking cuffs, pig."

"Bucky," Steve warns, but Sam waves a hand at him.

"I'm not your enemy, Yasha," Sam says. He gets the cuff keys out and unlocks Steve first and then, after Bucky's glared holes into his head, Bucky after him.

"Thanks," Steve says.

"For nothing," Bucky mutters, rubbing his sore wrists.

"It's time you talk, Steve," Sam says, throwing the cuffs onto the table. "Because I want to know why my best friend is walking back into a death trap with the Winter Soldier on his arm."

Steve and Bucky are stunned into silence, but Sam gives both of them a scrutinizing look.

"I'm the Sheriff," Sam says. "You know what that means? It's my job to know who the criminals are. That means the bad guys. Also means who HYDRA wants people to think are the bad guys."

Bucky's eyebrows furrow and Sam sighs.

"Come on, I need a drink," he says.

Then, in front of them both, Sam pushes the heavy-looking table out of the way. Under it, barely visible, built into the wooden floor, is the square outline of what is unmistakably a trap door. Sam squats, presses a hand against a specific panel and it gives away. Under the panel is a thick black ring, which he loops his fingers through, gives a quiet little grunt, and pulls.  
  
  
The special holding cell, as it turns out, is the entrance to an underground safe room. Built over a century ago as a safe house for officers in case of bomb threats or a nuclear holocaust, it was essentially a fallout shelter that had been forgotten, until Sam had been given charge of the city and had set to exploring every inch of the station.

"How long's that been?" Steve asks. He looks around the shelter with curiosity. It's not a very large room, but it's big enough to hold a couch, a refrigerator, a desk of old electronics, a bookshelf, filled, a monitor hung against the wall, another wall of weapons, and a rectangular table around which there are four chairs.

It looks like a hidden common room, more than anything else.

"About two years," Sam says. He goes to the refrigerator, opens it, and pulls out three bottles of beer. "Beer okay?"

"I'd kill for a beer," Steve says gratefully.

"Kill for less," Bucky mutters behind him.

"You done mumbling to yourself?" Steve asks, eyebrow raised, voice sharper than Bucky thinks is strictly necessary. Steve lifts the beer to his mouth and Bucky sighs, takes his from Sam and lets his shoulders slump slightly.

"Whatever," he says. "How'd you get the gig?"

Sam gives him a look and gestures at the table.

"Let's sit down for this," he says. "I got a story to tell and if I know anything about Steve, he's got one too. You tell me why the Winter Soldier's in my station and I'll tell you what you want to know."

"No one else can know, Sam," Steve says as he takes a seat at the table.

Bucky follows him, reluctantly, turning the chair around and sitting on it, back of the chair tipped against the edge of the table

"I don't think you get it, Steve," Sam says. He rummages around in his pocket and pulls something out. It's a crumpled, folded piece of paper. He tosses it to the middle of the table.

Bucky picks the paper up and unfolds it.

What stares back at him is another WANTED poster, but this time, it's not some old picture or a blurry shot—it's a picture of him and Steve. Bucky recognizes the shitty motel in the background.

Cold Spring.

"I'm not the only one who knows about Barnes," Sam says and tips his head at Bucky. "Everyone does. They're passing these out everywhere. They know you're passing this way, they just don't know why. So why is it an enemy of the state is here and why are you with him?"

Steve exhales, runs a hand through his hair, staring at the beer bottle in his hand.

Bucky looks at the picture and he looks at Steve. Exhaling angrily, he shakes his head and looks up at Sam.

"I'll start from the beginning," he says. If Steve trusts this Sam, Bucky will too. He just hopes Steve's right about him. "My name is James Buchanan Barnes. And I'm a part of the Resistance."  
  
  
They go through three beers each while talking in the underground holding cell. Bucky tells Sam almost everything, or at least everything that Steve himself knows too. Sam's eyes grow narrower and narrower, his eyebrows furrowed, letting out curses of frustration in all of the right places.

Bucky doesn't know how to trust this person, but he has to admit Sam makes it easy, or as easy as it's going to be with that sheriff's badge glaring at him. Steve stays mostly quiet, nursing his beers, eyes flickering up at Bucky every time he mentions something dangerous or something that Steve wasn't there for. Bucky doesn't look at him too closely, but he can see the lines of Steve's shoulders growing more rigid, his large hands holding onto the bottles tighter than strictly necessary. Once or twice Steve lets out a breath of relief that nearly slumps his whole body forward.

"Those motherfuckers," Sam says, tipping his chair back with the curse and then letting it fall forward again with a loud thud.

"Yeah," Bucky says, draining half of his beer in two gulps. "Basically."

"It's a miracle y'all got this far," Sam says. He looks at Steve firmly, maybe even appraisingly. "Seems like you put a lot on the line."

Steve shrugs at that, although whatever nonchalance he's trying to fake doesn't make it to his face.

"Some things are worth it," Steve says.

"That so?" is all Sam says in reply and Bucky's left feeling, once again, like he's missed something.

"Yeah," Steve says and finishes his bottle. "Some things. And sometimes."

"If that's the case," Sam says. "I have some good news and bad news."

Bucky watches Sam's face, the dark features, written with goodwill and honesty. He's only just met Sam, but he knows, somehow, like a core gut feeling, that Sam's a good guy, someone he could learn to trust, if he had the time.

"Good news is I got this job for the same reason you're on the run," Sam says, catching Bucky's eyes in particular. "Bad news is we're almost out of time."  
  
  
"Sam, you're—you're an Eye?" Steve asks, eyes wide. He looks gobsmacked, more surprised than Bucky thinks the situation warrants. He's so taken out of himself he barely notices the way his hand shakes, the way he rakes over Sam with a gaze so intense that it almost look like betrayal.

"An eye for an Eye," Sam says, tapping two fingers to his wrist and when he shoves his sleeve up, Bucky can see the tattoo inked onto the crook of his elbow.  
  
  
This is what Sam explains to them: that although the Eyes have been shoring up their strongholds all over the country, although they've been slowly pushing the tide back against HYDRA, HYDRA's been more aggressive in identifying and picking off members from their ranks. Sam gives a list of names Bucky doesn't recognize—Trish Walker, Jane Foster, Phil Coulson, Peter Quill—and tells them it's not the worst of it. HYDRA has been capturing agents and torturing secrets out of them, not all, but enough that the foundation's starting to look shakier than it had even a year ago. This is where the triaging of information helps, but it's not that simple either.

"Stone Mountain's gone," Sam says, seriously.

It hits him like a bag of bricks.

"Gone," Bucky repeats. "What do you mean—"

"Got raided," Sam says. "A bunch captured, some killed, some tortured. The entire safe house was gutted."

"T'Challa," Bucky chokes out. "M'Baku—are they—"

"I don't know," Sam shakes his head. "I don't know if anyone survived, I'm sorry."

Bucky looks at his hands in horror, the news sinking through him.

"They're closing in on us," Sam says, leaning forward. "They know that something is happening and they know you're involved, Barnes. They have State agents crawling all over the Eastern District looking for you. When they get an answer they don't like, they burn everything down. It's total destruction out there. It's a massacre."

Bucky feels the nausea roll over him, through him.

"Sam," Steve finally says, a warning in his voice.

"Sorry Steve, there's no way to sugarcoat it," Sam says, shaking his head. "I'm here to help people get through. The station's not a safe house, it’s a thruway. And a vantage point for us. You get enough Eyes in enough places and you start to crumble the structure—you get what I'm putting out?"

"Not really," Steve says, but Bucky does.

It all goes like this, doesn't it? Take HYDRA out and someone else has to take its place—something else. Is this something Bucky believes in? Does he have the privilege to not?

"How long have they been preparing for this, Sam?" Bucky asks, voice even.

Sam doesn't answer right away. He finishes his beer, then pushes the empty bottle away from him.

"Years," he says. "When HYDRA falls, the Eyes will move. The most dangerous thing is a power vacuum."

"Guess democracy is long dead, huh?" Bucky laughs, bitterly, and Sam looks uneasy at that.

He rolls his shoulder with a frown and a sigh.

"Don't know how much democracy ever really existed, Barnes," he says. "But this has been in the works a lot longer than we've been a part of it. I don't know all of the stages, but they're all moving, at once. Guess we just have to trust the Eyes know what they're doing. And that they'll get a chance to move their people before HYDRA kills them all."

Bucky closes his eyes, tries not to imagine T'Challa's dead body.

"Do they have people on the inside?" Bucky asks finally, opening his eyes again. "Inside HYDRA."

Sam considers this, tapping his fingers against the table and then nods.

"Yeah," he says. "Don't think this could work if they didn't."

Infiltrate—inside. Strengthen, foment—outside. Position—everywhere.

And while everything falls into place—send someone in to press the big red button, to send systems crashing around their shoulders, virtual and physical malfunction, take away their intelligence, take away their weapons, and when they're weak and toothless, cut off the head.

Bucky unconsciously touches the disc around his neck.

Steve shifts and Bucky starts, nodding.

"Okay," he says. He's done with this. "Wilson, you know everyone in town?"

"No," Sam says. Then he shrugs. "Well, kinda. Enough. I am the sheriff."

"I can see that, shit-for-brains," Bucky says, baring his teeth toward this person he just met. Steve looks stunned, but Sam just snorts, even grins a little.

"What you need, Winter Dumbass?" Sam asks with a nod.

"Finally, he has a purpose," Bucky says. He slams his palms down on the table and looks up at Sam. "I need you to take us to Tony Stark. And I need you to take us now."  
  
  
In the new world, the Stark name isn't what it once used to be. There's some history there that Bucky never bothered to read, but he remembers the name vaguely, in textbooks his mother used to make him study, or maybe in papers his father would have out in the morning before HYDRA banned all of them.

The thing about the Starks is that they were once one of the most industrious, wealthy, and powerful families in the world.

The old regime fell, HYDRA took its place, and everything fell into a generally horrifying existence. Most of the Stark fortune and name collapsed with that as well. But as sure as capitalism is a cockroach, so the Stark legacy lived on.

There’s a building in the middle of town that was once a tower and is now only a functional three floors; this is where Tony Stark still lives.

Tony was an enigma, as far as Starks went, but if there was one thing that anyone knew of him, it was that Tony Stark was one of HYDRA's biggest supporters.

 

*

_another man holding a microphone_  
_trying to say something at all_  
_or finding himself on an empty road_  
_trying to choose which way to go_  
[world gone mad; bastille](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOksZ8VogRw)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Helloooo UST, how did YOU get in there? 
> 
> Thank you for your kind words! I love reading your comments and reactions. >:) ♥


	8. stark mansion; new breukelen; eastern district.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "But be careful," she says. "The heart wants what it wants. But the heart can be fooled too. Protect your heart, Bucky Barnes. And protect yourself."

_did we light too many matches_  
_turn ourselves into these ashes_  
_did we throw it all away;_  
_we walk through the fire_  
_is there a way out_  
_is there a way out_

*

**stark mansion; new breukelen; eastern district.**

Sam puts them in the back of his patrol car again, smuggles them out of the station and across town to where the Stark Mansion juts up like an ugly, decrepit, old silver thumb.

The thing about Tony Stark was that not only was he one of HYDRA's biggest supporters, but that he had also made this name for himself almost perfectly coinciding with the emerging of the second resistance. Curious.

What it meant, in truth, was that Tony Stark curried favors from HYDRA with one hand and fed it to the Eyes with the other. Stark Mansion wasn't only an eyesore, but it was the biggest and most well run safe houses in the Eastern District.

"God bless Pepper Potts," Sam mutters as he kills the engine. "Stands his insufferable ass more than he deserves and runs the safe house better than a saloon out west."

“Never met her,” Bucky says, staring out the dirty window at the ugly building. “Met him though.”

“Bet that was fun,” Sam snorts.

“Fun isn’t the word I’d use to describe Tony Stark,” Bucky mutters. He takes a breath and turns to Steve, who’s looking dubious about this whole affair. “Let me do the talking.”

Steve crosses his broad arms against his broad chest and looks as though Bucky’s told him he can’t handle his liquor in public.

“Oh yeah,” Sam says grinning. “You’re gonna hate him.”

“I can behave,” Steve grumbles and loosens his arms.

“Boy, you’ve never behaved a day in your life,” Sam says, checking the rearview mirror. “Now get out of my car, I can’t be seen with you two in public.”

Bucky nods, hand on the door when he pauses.

“Thanks, Sheriff Asswipe,” he says.

“Whatever, Winter Jackass,” Sam replies immediately. He turns then though, looks at both of them seriously. “It’s dangerous out there. I don’t know what you two are doing, but I want you to be careful doing it. I’ve lost a lot of good people to less. Promise me you aren’t gonna do something dumb as shit to join them.”

Bucky can’t promise anything of the sort, but Sam’s not looking at him anyway.

“I’ve known you a long time, Sam,” Steve says quietly. “When have I ever been known to do something stupid?”

Sam’s expression softens, even though his voice remains firm.

“It’s because I know you that I’m saying it. I miss you, dumbass,” he says. “Try not to get yourself killed.”

“Miss you too, Sam,” Steve mumbles. Bucky can’t even feel jealous this time, Steve looks so tired and sad.

“Be good to my best friend,” Sam says, firmer this time, looking straight at Steve. “Trust him. He’s a good guy. A stupid guy, but a good one.”

Steve looks like he’s on the verge of saying something stupid like, _is he?_ , but instead he nods.

“I’ll take care of him,” Steve says.

“I’ll see you punks later,” Sam says, nodding to both of them now. “An eye for an Eye.”

“An eye for an Eye,” Bucky returns.

Steve, he notices, says nothing at all.  
  
  
They wait under a dark awning jutting out in front of the building. Bucky pushes a button and when nothing happens, he pushes it again.

“You okay?” he says quietly to Steve. Steve’s been silent since getting out of the car, his shoulders hunched, his expression lost in thought.

“Yeah,” Steve says and nothing more.

Bucky wants to take his hand, touch his shoulder, force a way to bring him back into himself, but he doesn’t know if it’s his place. When he dissociates, he doesn’t like people touching him. Sometimes he just needs to go away to somewhere no one can find him.

“It’ll be okay,” Bucky promises, an empty lie for both of them. “I’ll make sure you keep your word to Sam. You’re not dying under my watch, asshole.”

Steve’s expression flickers between stormy and something so uncertain, Bucky nearly doesn’t recognize him.

“Bucky,” Steve says, suddenly, hand on Bucky’s elbow. “I have to—”

He’s interrupted before he finishes his thought, the door sliding opening, although there’s no one there.

“Hello?” Bucky frowns.

“Mr. Stark will see you inside, sirs,” a kind English-accented voice tells them.

Bucky and Steve give one another bewildered looks and step in through the doors. The doors close behind them with a click and they look to see who welcomed them in—only to find nobody.

Bucky’s never believed in ghosts, but he can’t ignore the goosebumps that raise on his arms.

“What the fuck,” Steve mutters and Bucky’s about to agree, when they hear what is undoubtedly one of the most annoying sounds of Bucky’s life behind them.

“That! That look right there!” a voice that can only belong to one man says, accompanied by what can only be described as cackling. “I live for that.”

Bucky’s not unused to the stab of irritation, having felt it sharply the only other time he had been forced into his company, but he’s almost overwhelmed by how fresh it feels, to look into the face of Tony Stark.

He looks more or less like Bucky remembers, like some kind of mad scientist on a quest to make himself look as distinguished and handsome as possible. It works, in a way, but the last time they had met, Tony had poked his stump of an arm one too many times and Bucky had been fresh off a healthy dose of torture, so he had grabbed Tony by the throat and slammed him back against a wall.

It had taken three different people to pull him back and even then, as he was panting and baring his teeth, Tony had grinned smugly, as though this was all going exactly according to his plans.

“Tony,” Bucky says.

“Barnes,” Tony Stark says, holding out his arms as though Bucky’s about to walk into them.

“Pass,” Bucky says and Tony lowers his arms dejectedly. “What the hell was that, Stark?”

“What, that cool trick?” Tony grins widely, like the crazed megalomaniac he probably is. “Oh nothing too complex, just ten years of research and circuitry, testing AI—that’s artificial intelligence—consciousness, stretching the bounds of human innovation and mechanisms, and tinkering with the foundations of this building to integrate my genius into a workable prototype of a—well cybertronic, let’s call it system of analytics and production. In a sense. See, what I did was—”

“A robot,” Bucky interrupts Tony’s exhausting rambling. “You built a robot?”

“That kind of oversimplification deserves to be a crime,” Tony declares, flapping his arms around a little bit. “He’s not a robot, he’s a Joint Artificial Robotic Vehicle of Intelligent Simulation.”

Bucky gives Tony an exasperated look and Tony flaps his arms again.

“His name is JARVIS,” a pleasant voice comes over Tony’s shoulder and Tony squeaks, turns around, looking pleased as punch. There’s a strawberry blond with a sharp face and kind eyes in a white suit who’s holding out a hand to Tony. “Tony.”

“Darling!” Tony crows. “Love of my life, apple of my eye, my sun and moon and—”

“The remote, Tony,” the woman says.

Something seems to war within Tony Stark before he slumps a little and hands over a tiny black device.

“Thank you, darling,” the woman says. She looks over Tony and Bucky and a stoic Steve and smiles apologetically. “I’m very sorry, I usually keep him on a better leash, but he was getting restless. Tony thinks it’s funny to scare all of the guests with JARVIS.”

“Who—” Bucky clears his throat and tries again. “Who’s JARVIS?”

“A robot,” the woman says promptly and Bucky is filled with an overwhelming sense of relief. Finally, someone he doesn’t have to kill.

“He’s more than just a robot,” Tony mutters and the woman pats his salt and pepper face.

“Sure he is, sweetheart,” she says. She pockets the remote and turns fully to Bucky and Steve. “You must be James. I’m Pepper Potts, Tony’s—”

“—fiancée!” Tony interjects excitedly.

Pepper sighs and seems as though she would be pinching the bridge of her nose if she could or that she, at least, is used to doing so.

“—director of operations,” Pepper says. “And the other thing, I suppose.”

“James Barnes,” Bucky says, offering her a hand. “I go by Bucky.”

“Bucky!” Tony says. “Buckleton. Buckingham. Buckaloo.”

“Is he okay?” Bucky raises an eyebrow and Pepper seems to consider this question seriously.

“Oh I doubt it,” she says. “And you are—?”

“Peter,” Tony supplies, asked by no one.

“What?” Bucky frowns. “No, this is Steve.”

“Peter Steve?” Tony asks and Bucky doesn’t think he’s being actively stupid, but he hasn’t been around geniuses enough to tell.

“Steve Steve,” Bucky says, staring at Tony. “Are you broken?”

A crease forms between Tony’s eyes and in an act of rare and true miracle, he stops talking long enough for Bucky to look over to Steve and Pepper. Steve shrugs and Pepper smiles at them both.

“Well, Steve Steve and Bucky, our home is your home,” she says. “Are you hungry? Tony likes to cook when he gets antsy and he’s been antsy his entire life, so we have enough to go around and then some to spare.”

“I could eat,” Bucky admits, thinking about the last time he and Steve had eaten a meal and coming up with three beers in an underground panic room.

“Thank you, Miss Potts,” Steve says graciously, giving her that smile that makes Bucky’s stomach twist. “That would be great.”

Pepper returns his smile, of course, and starts leading them across black and white checkered tile floors toward a sweeping granite staircase.

Tony is uncharacteristically quiet and when Bucky turns, he sees him watching Steve, eyes narrowed.  
  
  
The meal is pleasant enough, with more food than Bucky’s seen in weeks. The hunger knocks around his stomach, keening at the smells mingling together. If Tony did cook, he must have been vibrating out of his skin, because it's more feast than meal with three vegetable dishes, a pot of rice, an overflowing salad, a whole chicken roast, buttered rolls, and something that looks like soup, which Pepper explains is lentils. Pepper gives them wine and Bucky is very aware of how dirty he and Steve must be, especially sitting in this nice dining room in the nice, wide hall on the second floor of Stark Mansion, with nice, white tablecloths, and silverware that he can see his reflection in. Next to him, Steve seems uncomfortable among the grandeur too, although he stays quiet and Bucky can almost tell how hungry he must be, just by the way his pupils seem to dilate.

Bucky tries to stop paying such close attention to Steve, although he's relieved when Pepper sits them next to each other. Their fingers brush together under the table and even that brief touch calms whatever's churning inside of Bucky.

"Please, help yourselves," Pepper says.

"My compliments to the chef," Tony says, reaching for a roll. And then, delighted, "Wait! That's me!"

Bucky rolls his eyes, but doesn't have to be told twice. He piles his plate with food, thanks Pepper specifically, and sits back, ready to listen.  
  
  
The thing about undercover alliances, Pepper explains, is that they sit on the head on the head of a pin. Alliances aren't built on trust, they're built on schemes, on information given and information lost. HYDRA thinks that Tony Stark is their ally because it benefits them to believe they have a wealthy, charismatic, popular man in their pocket. There's only so much that iron can crush; for the rest, they need a handsome white man.

For Tony, the reputation isn't the point. He cares about his family's legacy insomuch as he's able to use it to fuck HYDRA over. No, Tony Stark gives HYDRA false hope in turning the public tide and in exchange, he's given security clearance no reasonable tyrannical government would give a maverick with more money than good sense. He uses that clearance liberally and much to the advantage, as it turns out, of a small group of rebels he's grown very fond of.

"HYDRA has blacklists across the system," Tony explains, sipping on his wine. "We know about most of the big ones, the people HYDRA want to get rid of in a big way. You, for example."

Bucky swallows his mouthful of rice.

"There are a hundred other lists," Pepper adds. "People who have spoken out against them, people who aren't quite as susceptible to propaganda as they want them to be, intellectuals, dissidents—"

"Professors?" Bucky asks, quietly.

"Professors," Pepper agrees and Bucky's stomach twists. "These people aren't on their immediate list, but they have targets on their backs."

"HYDRA signed their death warrants and they don't even know it," Tony says, not with a little disgust. “Not so much a shoot-on-sight as an arrest-torture-a-little-then-shoot-anyway kind of deal.”

"What do you do with the lists?" Bucky asks.

"We get them out, James," Pepper says, kindly. "We find them and take them far away."

Pepper explains most of it—the passage through the safe house, their refugee operations, the careful balance they have set up with the sheriff’s office and HYDRA’s leadership council, the fine line they walk, the crystal thin web they’re all sitting on.

Bucky stabs his chicken and doesn’t feel better about it, knowing how delicate the structure is. If anything, he feels his temple throb with what threatens to become a migraine.

Tony himself doesn’t seem too worried that everything is built on a house of cards. He’s more interested in Steve.

"Where did you say you met Buckleberry?" he asks, spearing a potato and pointing it at Steve.

"Liberty City," Steve says and scoops rice into his mouth.

"And why were you at Liberty City?" Tony asks, squinting.

"To pick up Bucky," Steve says, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes, but what were you doing _before_ that?" Tony waves the fork dismissively.

Steve takes the questioning with grace, but Bucky's starting to feel irritated on his behalf.

"Patrolling the Western seaboard to brainwash some kids into joining HYDRA," Bucky says waspishly. "Or escaping a life of indentured servitude at the circus, your pick, Tony."

"I'll think about the circus thing later," Tony says, seeming mildly interested, but Steve just shakes his head.

"I can answer his questions, Buck," Steve says. He takes a mouthful of wine to wash down his rice. "I was traveling, Stark."

"Across the country?" Tony asks, skeptically. "In this economy?"

Steve shrugs.

"Don't got anyone and got nowhere to be," he says. "Why not? I like to see what's out there. Spent a lot of my life sick in an apartment building, don't want that anymore."

"You were sick?" Bucky asks with a frown, but Tony barrels over him.

"Fine, sure, you were just out there, traveling by yourself, which is illegal and definitely likely to get you shot, but I'll buy it for the second," Tony says. "What made you join the Eyes? When did you join the Eyes? What's your purpose here?"

"Tony," Pepper says warningly, just as Bucky slams a hand down on the table.

"Are you fucking kidding me, Stark?" he barks out.

Tony puts up both of his hands, a few kernels of rice flinging across the table as he does.

"You wanna say something to me?" Steve asks slowly and puts his fork down. He takes the napkin beside him and wipes at the corners of his mouth. "Just say it."

"Fine, I’ll say it, since nobody will. I don't trust you," Tony says immediately.

And that—that fucking pisses Bucky off.

" _Tony_ ," Pepper says again, but no, Bucky's had enough of this shit.

"You don't _know_ him," Bucky growls. "We come here for your help because fucking T'Challa told us to and now he's dead under a pile of rubble somewhere and you're sitting there with that smug smirk on your fucking face in the middle of your fucking mansion, judging someone you just met. _Fuck you_."

"Bucky," Steve warns, but Bucky's so pissed he's nearly shaking.

"You want to be pissed at me?" Tony asks and his voice shifts subtly, from the dumb, manic mad genius and arrogant asshole to someone more discerning. He gives Steve a critical, appraising look. "Fine. But don't act like you know a single thing about him. This guy happens to pick you up in Liberty City and you just _trust_ him?"

"He's my fucking coyote," Bucky says, tone low and dangerous. His eyes are flashing, his blood pressure close to sky rocketing. "You don't have to fucking trust him, Stark, but he was picked by the Eyes to smuggle me across the fucking country and that's what he's done. He coulda killed me half a dozen times over and instead, he's taken bullets for me. You think I'd be alive if he hadn't gotten me across half the fucking country with the State's rabid dogs on my heels?"

Bucky stands up to find he's shaking with anger, nearly lightheaded from it.

Steve's hand is on his wrist immediately, trying to calm him, but Bucky shakes him off too.

"Fine," Tony says spitefully. "You want to get yourself killed? That's no business of mine—oh wait, _yes it is_. Your business is all of our business. Get yourself killed on your own time with your stupid decisions, Barnes. But until then, you're on official mission business and I'm telling you, there's something off here."

"Fuck you, Tony," Bucky says. He backs away from the table and when Steve reaches for him, he wrenches himself out of his grasp. "I'm not an idiot. This mission was entrusted to _me_. I didn't come here to be patronized. Get me where I need to go or—just fuck off."

He's so pissed, he's almost visibly shaking now, overwhelmed by the sheer force of his anger.

"James," Pepper says firmly and then she too stands. "I'm sorry. Ignore him, please."

"Bucky," Steve tries again, but Bucky shakes his head, too angry and raw to deal with anyone—even Steve—right now.

"I'm warning you, Barnes," Tony says, because he can't shut his fucking mouth even if it kills him. "You know I'm right. Trust your gut, you foolish boy."

Pepper shoots Tony a dangerous look and Tony huffs too. He stands on his side of the table, pushing his chair back forcefully as it does. It goes toppling over and he ignores it, glaring at it and muttering to himself as he stalks out of the room.

"I'm so sorry," Pepper tries again, sounding both sorry and strained. "You’ve been traveling for ages, let me show you to your room. I'll keep your dinner warm for later."  
  
  
Bucky follows Pepper, his mind a constant loop of Tony fucking Stark, his plates shifting furiously in time with how hard his blood is pumping.

"He's _wrong_ ," Bucky says to Pepper as she leads him out of the dining hall and up the stairs to the third floor. "Steve would never hurt me."

"I know, James," Pepper says. "I believe you. Tony—he can be overprotective. I think he's just looking out for you, if...in an ill-advised way."

She gets to a room at the end of the hallway, inserts a key and unlocks the door.

"This is your key," she says and presses it to Bucky's flesh palm. Then she pauses. "James, far be it for me to interfere in your affairs, but—whatever Tony is, and he's a lot of things, he isn't cruel. He isn't often baseless and he's rarely irrational. If he's suspicious, there's a reason for it. Could there...is there a chance he's right?"

As furious as Bucky is, there's something about Pepper that's so reassuring and calming that he can't quite muster the energy to snap at her too. She makes him want to slow down, just for a moment, and consider the question, as though it has any merit at all. As though it could have merit.

So he does consider it—wonders, again, if Steve Rogers is a person he can trust. Steve Rogers who throws himself at State soldiers if he senses that someone is in danger, Steve Rogers who falls quiet when there are too many thoughts crowding into his head; Steve Rogers who hates chicken pot pie and likes swimming in creeks and lost his whole world in a fire one evening and still has a best friend in a town he hasn't visited in three years. Steve Rogers who had put his fingers into Bucky's hair and brought him back from the edge, when his eyes had turned black and he'd threatened to go so far away.

Steve whose hand shakes on the trigger when he doesn't think Bucky's watching. Steve is a monster in his own right, but so is Bucky.

And that's why Bucky trusts him.

"No," Bucky says with a rough swallow, shaking his head. "There's no chance at all. I trust him, Pepper. With my whole life. And he hasn't let me down so far."

Pepper gives Bucky a long look, as though she can see to the heart of him. He wonders what she finds there, if anything. Then, letting out a soft breath, she raises a hand and places it on his scruffy face.

"Okay, James," she says. "I believe you."

Bucky lets out a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding. Pepper gives him a kiss on the cheek and steps back.

"But be careful," she says. "The heart wants what it wants. But the heart can be fooled too. Protect your heart, Bucky Barnes. And protect yourself."

She leaves him outside the door—confused, overwhelmed, and, strangely, somehow, a little heartbroken.  
  
  
He lets himself into the room and closes the door behind him. He's shaking so badly at this point that he has to stop halfway to the bed, catch himself on the wall, and press his forehead against it to help stop the trembling. He doesn't know why he's reacting like this, why Tony's provocations and his own vehemence is making his body shut down so thoroughly. He closes his eyes tight, tries to will his breathing to calm down, because he can't start to dissociate, not here, not when they're so close.

He stands against the wall like that, maybe for a minute, maybe for much longer. He hears a light knock on the door and tenses. Bucky tries to ignore it, but it comes again, a little louder this time.

"Buck?" Steve calls softly. "Can I come in?"

Bucky doesn't know if it's a good idea, but he also doesn't know that it's a good idea to be alone. He thinks he wants to be held. Is this something he can ask of Steve?

"Okay," he says quietly, but Steve must hear him anyway, because Bucky hears the door click open.

After a moment it clicks shut and Bucky hears the lock twist.

"Hey," Steve says.

"Just—give me a minute," Bucky says through gritted teeth. He tries to take in big, steadying breaths and exhale to stabilize himself.

It maybe works and it maybe doesn't.

He doesn't get a chance to find out, really, because a minute later, he feels large hands spread across his flesh shoulder.

"Hey," Steve says again. "Bucky, look at me."

Bucky's reluctant to do so, but Steve tugs him away from the wall gently, one hand on his shoulder, the other cupping his face.

"Are you okay?" Steve asks. "Yes or no?"

Bucky nods, then shakes his head.

"I don't know," he says. "Fuck. I'm sorry, Steve. The shit he said, he was fucking—"

"I couldn’t care less what Tony Stark thinks about me," Steve says. He's looking into Bucky's eyes as though he can tease out every spare thought. Bucky feels raw, frayed at the edges. If Steve keeps looking, he's going to see something neither of them are ready for. “Fuck him. Are _you_ okay?”

"I trust you, Steve," Bucky says. He curls his fingers into the edge of Steve's shirt. "Do you hear me? I _trust_ you."

Steve swallows and looks so lost it threatens to break Bucky's heart all over again.

"Oh, sweetheart," Bucky says. "Why do you always look so sad?"

Steve shakes his head, his fingers in Bucky's hair.

"Bucky, I have to—you have to let me say something," he says, but now Bucky's the one who's shaking his head.

"Steve," he says and if he sounds a little desperate, it's because he feels it. He's up on his tiptoes now, closing the two inches between them. He pushes his own hand into Steve's hair, pushes it back, runs his fingers through it until it tousles. "Steve, please."

Steve falters, swallows heavily.

"You promised," Bucky says, tugging at him.

Steve hesitates for so long Bucky thinks it's going to kill him. It eats at the threads that are unspooling, the unspent anxiety in his chest. Bucky's about to snap and push him away, when Steve's hand curves around his jaw, fingers thick, half sprawled across his neck.

"I promised you later," Steve agrees.

Bucky's eyes flutter, his breathing coming out erratically.

"Is it later?" he asks.

Steve gives him such a long look that Bucky starts to squirm. Then he moves, his thumb at Bucky's pulse point, his mouth on Bucky's.

"Yeah," Steve says, breathing the words into Bucky's mouth. "It's later, darling."

Bucky lets that kiss take him under, the heat sinking into him, sweeping through his body. Steve's mouth is hot and wet and Bucky licks into it while Steve presses him into the wall, all hard lines behind Bucky and in front of him. Bucky clutches at Steve's shirt, fingers scrabbling there and Steve rakes his hand through Bucky's hair, drags his fingers down over Bucky's jaw, leaving behind a trail of light pain where his nails nick into skin.

Bucky feels like every part of him is being licked by flames, every inch of his skin hot, the fire always simmering just underneath now searing at the touch. He shudders as he feels Steve's hands against him, pressing into his scars, rough, calloused fingers tracing the marks HYDRA left behind. It makes him feel more exposed than he has in years and the thought should be devastating, but he's so out of his mind with need now that he can barely hold onto that thought.

If Steve is as desperate as Bucky feels, he doesn't seem it, his movements as slow and deliberate as Bucky's are nearly frenzied. Bucky reaches around Steve's back, fingers curled into Steve's shirt like it's some kind of line cast into choppy waters, a lifeline to keep him from sinking. He tries to pull Steve closer, making the kiss sloppy and feverish.

"Hey," Steve says into his mouth, instead. "Hey, it's okay. Bucky."

Steve drags his hands up, holds Bucky's face still, slows the kiss until he's controlling it, kissing Bucky deep, taking his anxiety and swallowing it. Whatever he does, it works. Bucky focuses on Steve's mouth, the feel and taste of it and when the heat runs along his spine again, it's less panicked.

"There," Steve says, breaking the kiss, just enough for Bucky open his eyes. "Better?'

Bucky's heart tumbles in his chest and he feels hot all over, but he can remember how to breathe again. He nods.

"Let me take care of you, sweetheart," Steve says and Bucky nods again.

This time when Steve moves, he uses the whole strength of him. He gets his hands all over Bucky; one tangled in Bucky’s hair and another on his face, the roughness of his fingers dragging down his jawline. The friction leaves him inhaling sharply, sends shivers down Bucky’s spine that lodge themselves firmly in his groin. Bucky’s panting through the kisses by the time Steve’s hand reaches down to his shirt. Steve can’t be bothered with all of the buttons. He just tears the shirt straight down, buttons flying to the side.

Bucky shrugs out of the ruined shirt, the cool air of the room sliding into the space between them. He barely has the time to shiver before Steve's hands are moving up his sides, rough and slow, calluses catching on the raised edges of scars.

"Steve," Bucky murmurs, but Steve mouths along Bucky's jaw, his hands still resolutely exploring.

He moves his fingertips along the puffed skin, tracing each scar fully, tip to tip, before moving onto the next. He presses his fingers in at intervals and Bucky lets out little gasps, not because it hurts, but because the sensation is so good, the pressure making him sensitive in areas he normally isn't. Steve slows as he traces the roadmap of scars on Bucky’s back. Even that light touch is made rough by his calluses, a reminder of how difficult it's been just to survive.

Bucky refuses to let himself go down that line of thought though, not now, when all he wants is to be taken out of body and mind. He focuses instead on how he ought to feel more exposed, how it should devastate him to be seen like this—with his every scar is laid bare. It doesn’t. Steve presses his fingers down a particularly old, long scar, along his lower back, one that Bucky remembers in his nightmares more often than he’d like, but even that only makes him arch into his touch. Steve makes a noise almost like choking against Bucky’s mouth, and for a moment, Bucky pauses, and looks into his eyes.

He almost wishes he hadn’t, because the person looking back is someone different from who he's known. He's Steve, but a different one—one reflecting such vulnerability that Bucky has to swallow his fear. There's something terrifying there, in the stained blue of Steve’s eyes, like a dam about to burst. Bucky wants to know and he doesn't. He wants no secrets between them. He wants to think about nothing at all.

One night when neither of them are carrying anything, that's all he asks.

"Another time," Bucky says quietly, voice rough. His arms around around Steve's broad shoulders, encasing them both, leaving no room for escape. "Tonight, I want this."

Steve pauses, hands at the small of Bucky's back.

"Are you sure?" he asks, just once.

Bucky kisses Steve back in response, wordlessly desperate to let Steve know that whatever he has to say can wait, that what they need now isn't to talk, it's to aggressively not talk.

Steve blinks and the moment is gone, replaced by a mirroring dark, desperate lust. Whatever has been holding him back is gone too. He wraps an arm around Bucky's back and uses his strength to lift him. Bucky wraps his legs around Steve's waist, his back held up against the wall and Steve is there, his mouth on Bucky's mouth again, then against his jaw, working his way to Bucky's neck, where he stops to suck on his pulse point.

 

  
_picture: steve holding bucky up against the wall, bucky with his legs wrapped around him, kissing; art by witchylurker_

Bucky groans this time, mind scrambling, the distinct feeling in his chest that he's going to burn up under Steve's hands and that it will have been worth it. Then Steve’s working on undoing his belt and Bucky has the hazy, desperate thought that maybe he ought to get his hands on Steve’s skin too. He reaches out, nudging Steve’s scarf out of the way. Steve gets the hint and nearly tears off the worn fabric, before shrugging out of his duster. The duster hits the floor and Bucky’s already halfway through pulling Steve’s shirt off.

It’s not like he hasn’t seen Steve shirtless before, but the scarring in the light of the room seems starker somehow, glowing bare for him. Bucky’s almost hesitant at first, touching a scar at the top of Steve’s shoulder. He brushes his thumb over it and imagines what Steve might’ve gone through to get it. The scar wraps around the shoulder, leading down to one across his back. Steve makes a little noise at the contact, but doesn't pull away. Under Bucky's touch, Steve’s skin feels so damned hot; he knows he’s playing with fire, but like a moth staring into the light, he can’t stop. He traces the long scars down Steve’s back, the marks that embed his past into him, etching memories into skin that he'll never be able to forget.

For a moment Bucky lingers there, then he runs his nails down one scar, while brushing his open mouth against the one at Steve's shoulder.

Steve, already panting against him, his face buried in Bucky’s shoulder, lets out another sound, something wounded, punched out of his gut. He’s kissing along Bucky’s collarbone, somehow soft and rough all at once, but he pauses now and Bucky runs his nails down his back again. Steve groans again, so Bucky does it again, runs his hand across Steve’s back, touches another scar. This scar is thick and bold and when Bucky digs his nails in, Steve bites down against Bucky's neck.

The flash of pain jars him, nearly has his head rolling back in his head and he's so desperate to feel it again, he barely notices his hands slip from Steve's back and dig into his hard waist. The wall doesn’t give away behind him and suddenly Steve’s even closer now, his hips grinding against Bucky’s cock, despite the layers of fabric between them.

Bucky's whole body is responding to Steve now, every inch of him hard and overheated. He's panting too and he nearly growls when Steve stops, his hand on Bucky’s belt, and looks at him.

"Are you waiting—for an invitation?" Bucky grits out. "Get me out of these fucking pants and put your fucking hands on me."

It seems to work. Steve kisses him again as he deftly undoes the clasp of Bucky’s belt, tugging down his pants and underwear in one go and then Bucky’s naked in front of Steve, his cock hard and heated. Steve thankfully stops wasting his goddamned time and gets his hand around it before Bucky has a chance to consider if Steve likes what he sees. It doesn't matter anyway—the touch feels so good Bucky lets out a groan, his head banging back onto the wall behind him.

Steve touches Bucky’s cock with that same heated desperation and all of Bucky responds to it, both the feverish tumbling in his chest and his hard dick. He groans again and arcs his hips into the touch. He can’t remember the last time he'd let someone manhandle him like this, but he has no complaints now, not with Steve's hand wrapped around him.

"Let me—" Steve says, hand working Bucky over at the same time his tongue is doing work in his mouth. "—fuck you."

"No shit," Bucky bites at Steve's lips out of spite. " _No shit._ "

Steve takes that for the explicit permission it is and he stumbles backwards, hands at Bucky's back, helping him stay upright as Bucky tightens his legs around Steve's waist.

He manages to back them until the back of his legs hit the edge of the bed and it's only then that he must realize Bucky's not exactly light as a feather, because they both go down hard, Steve onto his ass, Bucky sprawled somewhere above him. Bucky keeps his mouth plastered to Steve, flesh hand bunching the sheets beside Steve's head, the metal hand reaching down to start undoing his buckle.

When it's clear that this isn't working, Steve pushes Bucky off of him to do the work himself. Bucky lays on his back, stark naked, hard and panting, and stares up at the ceiling. He turns his head to the left and right, room blurring around him.

The room’s nicer than any place they’ve stayed in the last forever; there’s a granite dresser against the opposite wall. For Christ’s sake—when would either of them ever have enough clothing to need a dresser?

Steve grunts as he shoves his pants and underwear off and that regains Bucky's attention. He sees a flash of heavily scarred, pale skin and the curve of a dick and then Steve is on top of him again, his hands in Bucky's hair, his mouth on top of his. Bucky gives a grunt, wraps his hands around Steve's shoulders and hauls him up, shifts them both back until they're panting into each other's mouths, but in the middle of the bed. They're both aching to be touched, Bucky nearly frantic again, but Steve does what he did before, just threads his fingers into Bucky's hair and spends a few more minutes just kissing him, slow and deep, like this is the moment Bucky should be getting mouth fucked, but with emotion.

"Fuck you," he says thickly, his metal hands sliding across Steve's torso, catching on scars, and making Steve hiss, until he has his own hand on Steve's cock and Steve lets out that gut punched sound again.

It occurs to Bucky, somewhere far back in his hazy, lust-addled mind that if he hasn't been touched in ages, then maybe Steve hasn't either.

Steve relaxes into Bucky’s hand and Bucky starts stroking him, matching the rhythm of Steve's hand on him. They synchronize for a moment, both panting, a sheen of sweat covering their bodies. Steve presses his forehead against Bucky's and they both breathe in and out harshly, their breaths hot and mingling. Bucky can already feel his body start to tense, every muscle taut as string. If Steve doesn't do what he needs to fast, they'll never get around to the fucking.

"Steve," Bucky rasps out. "Now or never, pal."

Steve laughs at that, already sounding fucking wrecked, even though they've barely had their hands on each other for more than a minute. For a moment they stall, Steve above him, bathing Bucky's body in his relentless heat. It seeps into his very bones, warms parts of him that have been cold for years, since he woke up and found himself strapped to a metal table. It’s overwhelming to feel so close to alive and Bucky has to close his eyes. The bed’s soft behind him and Steve’s so sharp and hard above him, everything more real than he’s ever remembered.

God, for a moment, Bucky almost thinks that this could be enough. That the two of them, together, in this whole fucked up, miserable, goddamned desolate world could be enough to save him—to save them. Maybe he could lose himself in Steve and that would be _enough_.

"Now," Steve says, as though he can hear Bucky's train of thought. He presses a rough, scratchy kiss to Bucky's throat and says, "I don't have anything for—"

"I don't care, Steve," Bucky groans. "Just fuck me."

Steve offers Bucky two fingers and Bucky takes them into his mouth, sucks them with a deep, wet noise that has Steve's eyes go nearly black. He tastes the dirt and salt on Steve's fingers and only has time to register how much he likes it before Steve reaches down with a shaking, spit-slicked finger to press at Bucky’s entrance. Bucky bites back a gasp, arching up without thinking. Steve uses his arm to hold him down as he starts working him open. Even his fingertip feels like fire, and it burns when he works it inside, although it's not unwelcome.

Bucky’s not about to lose his fucking mind because Steve shoved a finger in his ass, but he’s damned close, the heat and the intimacy making him feel like he's crawling out of his skin; as though something inside of him is about to crack open, his whole self exposed like a live wire.

It’s a few moments that feel like an eternity, and then Bucky manages to push that feeling down and focus on the physical sensations instead.

Steve’s working in another finger now while still kissing at Bucky’s jaw, his beard scratching Bucky's skin raw, and running his other hand through Bucky’s hair.

When Bucky finally nods, Steve takes out his fingers, splays his large hands against Bucky's overheated hips, lines himself up, and replaces them slowly, inch by inch, with his cock. His cock burns hotter than his fingers, but Bucky is so close to being blissed out that doesn’t mind.

"Okay?" Steve asks with a grunt.

"If—you— _move_ ," Bucky hisses and jostles Steve to get him going.

Steve doesn't have to be told twice. He starts moving, pushing in slowly at first, watching Bucky’s face with every movement. Bucky hisses, then nods, then just keeps nodding. It’s good, he doesn't manage to say. He’s tight and close to overstimulated, but _it's good_.

Steve seems to understand. He helps Bucky get a leg up on each shoulder and then he works him over for a good, long while, first moving slow and then faster and faster, sounds spilling from Bucky's mouth as he rams in and out. Bucky's fingers curl deep into Steve's side, his nails leaving marks, and the two of them explore as Steve fucks him, unable to keep their hands off of each other. Bucky runs fingers through soft blond curls at Steve’s chest and Steve tries an experimental flick of Bucky’s nipple and Bucky’s breath comes out in a harsh gasp. Steve does it again, slower, presses a thumb into one, and Bucky moans.

That moan must hit Steve hard, because he stutters with a deep groan and then Steve’s pushing in even more roughly and rocking his hips harder, grunting with the effort. He tries to keep his eyes open, but can't. His eyelashes cast long shadows on his cheekbones that Bucky finds himself mesmerized by.

If it's all going to come crashing down around them, then they're going to take this moment for what it is—hard and fleeting and frantic; and, strangely, something softer too. It’s a paradox of emotion, both desperate and chasms deep. The truth is that they’re both touch-starved and lonely and out of their minds with the what ifs, the weight of the cross they both bear. So if the only solace they find, for now, is in each other’s skin, Bucky’s going to take that, he’s going to be selfish about it.

Steve hits Bucky just right and Bucky arches, letting out a strangled cry, and it all devolves rather quickly after that. Bucky can’t help but wrap his hand around his cock and jerk himself off in time to Steve’s erratic thrusting.  
  
  
Steve's mouth finds Bucky's again in a hard, scratchy, and searing kiss. Then he reaches down to knock Bucky's hand out of the way and it's Steve's hand on his cock again that does it. Bucky chokes out Steve’s name when he comes, his orgasm hitting him like a stone.

It’s only a minute later before Steve comes too, with a groan that knocks the breath out of them both. Steve lays on top of him, body trembling, not making a sound, his breathing quick and harsh. Bucky feels it, the way Steve’s body is spent, and his mind is, finally, quiet. Bucky feels lighter than he has in a very long time. Steve’s forehead is nestled against his sweaty shoulder and they’re both overheated and definitely overstimulated, but Bucky doesn’t have the energy to care. Instead, he cards a hand through Steve’s sweaty golden strands, kisses the top of his head, and surrenders to the warmth  
  
  
It takes a few more minutes before Steve regains enough energy to roll off of Bucky onto his side and more minutes still before both of them come down off of their respective highs enough to say anything.

When they do, it's Bucky who turns to look at Steve.

"You motherfucker," he says. He's as surprised to find how tired he sounds as Steve looks surprised to hear him speak. "You could've started out fucking me and then we could've gone on the run. But no, you had to kill a man first, drag me halfway across the country, and then fuck me into the bed of the most annoying man I've ever met."

When Steve laughs, it's tired too, almost lazy, the sound of dripping honey.

"In my day, you killed a man first and then married him second," he says. "Don't disrespect my traditions."

"You're probably my age, you fucking asshole," Bucky snipes.

Steve chuckles some more and Bucky groans, reaches up to touch his face.

"Think my face is raw now," he says and feels how sensitive everything feels. Least of all, everything between his legs.

"Sorry," Steve says, not sounding sorry at all.

"Think we needed to just fuck this entire time?" Bucky asks with a sigh.

"Probably," is Steve's half-assed, lazy answer.

There are probably things they need to think about—Stark, the Citadel, where to go now and how to get there. Whatever Steve's been trying to say. What they're supposed to do after this.

But the moment still feels too fresh for that. Their bodies are cooling, they’re still feeling the post-sex glow, and everything is sticky between besides.

"Should clean up," Steve says. He's sprawled out now, taking up half the bed. His hand is somewhere in between them and Bucky twists his fingers until they're touching, just to keep one last bit of contact.

"Steve," Bucky says and looking up at the ceiling above them. The noise in his head is calmed now, the anxiety burned out. What he feels is nothing short of peace, or whatever he can manage that comes close to it.

"Buck," Steve says.

Bucky feels a shift and then Steve's fingers are pressed against his own too.

"It's okay, right? To want good things? Even if we don't get to keep them?"

It's too early to start feeling melancholy again, but even here, relaxing in a room with sex still hovering in the air, he can't help but question everything that's in front of him.

"Yeah, Buck," Steve says, quietly. "You can have good things. You deserve good things."

Bucky doesn't know about all of that. But he thinks, if nothing else, he'd like to deserve Steve.

He looks over at him again and Steve is watching him, blue eyes warm, maybe a little sad. Definitely a little sad. Steve Rogers is always, if nothing else, a little sad.

"What did you want to tell me?" Bucky asks quietly.

The hesitation that crosses Steve's face isn't reassuring, but the air that goes out of him maybe is. Steve shakes his head.

They hold one another's gazes for a moment, their words caught in a space of time that contains magnitudes. Still, it's a pocket carved out, just for them. It can be anything they want it to be.

So Steve lets out a breath and shakes his head.

Then he moves closer, hand on Bucky's face, and kisses him.

"Nothing," Steve says and kisses him again. "Later, sweetheart."

Bucky shudders a little, but holds Steve's face too.

Let them have this moment of peace, he thinks.

When he kisses Steve back this time, he lets his eyes fall shut.

*

_i try to understand_  
_how we're here again_  
_(in the middle of the storm)_  
_there's no way to go, no way to go_  
_but straight through the smoke, straight through the smoke_  
_and the fight is all we know_  
[walk through the fire; zayde wolf (ft. ruelle)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwBetDKLS5E)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO MUCH to my smutsmith [mystrana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mystrana/pseuds/Mystrana) for your extensive help and work on the smuttening here!! Couldn't have gotten these two idiots to finally bang without you. ♥
> 
> Retweet witchylurker's SMOKIN HOT art [here](https://twitter.com/Witchylurker/status/1099740531805040640) or reblog it on Tumblr [here](https://witchylurker.tumblr.com/post/183028836407/he-wraps-an-arm-around-buckys-back-and-uses-his)!


	9. the district.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is all leading to one thing and it's the one thing Bucky can't deny anymore—into the eye of the hurricane, the center of the storm. Whatever happens from here happens. And Bucky will either end up dead or they all will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One last chapter before the finale tomorrow. Thank you for reading! And sorry, in advance.

_and you could have it all_  
_my empire of dirt_  
_i will let you down_  
_i will make you hurt_

 

*

**the district.**

“There’s a landing pad half a mile off of the Citadel, southeast if you’re following the air currents. It’s only for the highest officials—the Titan, his Right Hand, anyone else with just enough free-flowing sadism, I guess. The port gets turned on ten minutes before any scheduled landing; it’s dead space otherwise. That’s all the time you have. Ten minutes. You get in, land the quinjet, and get the fuck out of dodge. You don’t want to know who’s landing after you, got it? Do not stick around to see.”

Tony’s hovering next to a screen lit up with schematics and blueprints he’s drawn—of the District, the Citadel, and the quinjet. The quinjet is technology unlike any that Bucky's seen in this life. He recognizes it distantly as a dream he might have had when he was younger, stealing away moments in library stacks, thumbing open pages to science fiction books, before it all went away—libraries, schools, technology, all of it.

It's like a flat, silver disc of a plane, about five times the length of the truck they had stolen and about ten times as wide, with two flat wings jutting out from the sides and a tail sticking up from the back.

"It's simple," Tony's saying and presses some button on what looks like a flat, black pad made entirely and only of buttons. "Here's the console. The directions are straightforward. You know how to work a truck?"

Tony Stark is about as subtle as a horse drinking whiskey, so the bitter tinge to his voice does not go unnoticed. He hasn't said anything explicitly about Steve to Bucky, but he hasn't apologized either. Although, neither has Bucky for that matter. They keep ignoring the incident, as though the dirty looks he keeps throwing at Steve are invisible. It's milder than Bucky expects and he has no doubt Pepper has something to do with the situation.

He doesn't give a shit either way. He woke up this morning to Steve's arm thrown over his waist and when he had shifted, Steve had woken up, as though from a deep trance. He had opened his eyes and just looked at Bucky, as though he couldn't quite believe he was still there. Bucky had ignored all manners of tumbling in his chest and swooping in his stomach and had flipped them around instead, kissed Steve thoroughly, and then made a morning out of riding him. They had managed to get out of bed to take a shower and Steve had pressed him against the tiles, kissing down his shoulder, and then turned him around, sinking to his knees and taking Bucky into his mouth while the hot water turned cold. Bucky had nearly lost his goddamned mind to the overstimulation and he’s sure Steve’s scalp is probably still sore from all of the hair pulling.

He is well and truly fucked, in all the ways he can be, so it doesn't matter to him, really, what kind of grudge Tony has against Steve. What matters to him is that Steve is next to him, knuckles pressed against the side of Bucky's hand as they both stand, palms on the table, looking at the schematics.

Bucky's not stupid enough to let him get distracted from the mission, but he won't deny that it's difficult to stay focused when Steve is right there, his large, overheated body warming the air between them. Bucky wants to take him back to the room, frame his face between his hands and kiss him until they're both hazy and panting again.

"Yeah, Tony," Steve says, voice measured. "I know how to drive a truck."

Steve brings Bucky back to the situation at hand; which is that they're going to somehow have to fly what amounts to a chrome spaceship through airspace that's only authorized for use by the Titan himself and a hand-selected group of his most sadistic advisors and patrons. Civilians haven't been airborne since before HYDRA came into power.

So Bucky has no idea how Tony thinks they're going to fly this thing to the District undetected.

"It's just like a truck," Tony says. "More of less. Maybe more than less. I've made the buttons easy enough even you couldn't manage to screw it up, Rogers."

"Tony," Pepper warns and Bucky clenches his teeth. Pepper is sitting at the table, looking through intelligence reports a carrier brought to her this morning.

"Any news about T'Challa?" Bucky asks, momentarily distracted.

Pepper shakes her head. "I'm sorry, James."

Bucky swallows the growing devastation. He doesn't know how he'll ever be able to tell Shuri. He doesn't know if Shuri is alive to know at all.

Everything seems to hinge very precariously and very dangerously on him.

"You land the quinjet and you hook around back here," Tony says, switching from schematics of the quinjet to a blueprint of the Citadel itself.

The Citadel is a tall, ugly, black structure stuck in the middle of the District, towering high above the rest of the city, a panopticon of malicious intent. The obelisk is hewn roughly from black stone and has four corners to it, the sides of the tower sweeping up into sharp tips that look like claws reaching into the sky. It's not meant to be aesthetically pleasing. It's meant to exude malevolence and it does, at that. Just looking at the picture is enough to make Bucky's throat go dry, his heart hammer nervously against his rib cage.

 

  
_picture: the citadel; art by fannishlove_

"There are guards at the top of the spires, guards stationed at points around the perimeter," Tony goes on. The images switch and suddenly they're looking at an aerial view of the area. There are small watchtowers and buildings at reasonable distances, perfect for sniper shots. "There's only a two minute gap in their guard schedule. We'll try to exploit that, but mostly you have to make sure not to get shot. That gonna be a problem?"

Bucky raises an eyebrow.

"No," he says.

"Good, because that's not the only fun and games they have waiting for you," Tony says. "There are seven levels inside the Citadel, each connected by staircases at the corner back of each floor. Don't look at me like that, Barnes, I didn't design this medieval monstrosity."

"Shocking," Bucky mutters under his breath and Steve nudges him slightly in the side.

"If everything goes according to plan, the security inside shouldn't be a problem. The room you need is on the seventh floor," Tony says. He switches the screen again and the slide shows a rough blueprint of the inside of the tower.

The number of levels makes Bucky a little dizzy. They have so little time and so much to go through. Inadvertently, he takes a breath and brushes his fingers against the disc.

It all comes down to this now.

There's no more room to fuck up.

"What's the plan?" Steve asks sharply. "You're asking us to trust in a lot."

"I'm not asking _you_ to do anything," Tony retorts immediately and Bucky lets out a growl at the same time Pepper hits Tony's elbow with her stack of papers. "It's a need to know basis, Rogers. And you don't need to know."

Steve exhales in frustration and Bucky can feel it roll off of him, the irritation. He nearly bristles with it.

"Fine," Steve says instead, because unlike Bucky, he can control himself in these situations. "Tell us what to look for, Stark."

Tony doesn't make his glare a secret and Bucky's about to straighten and tell him off, but he feels Steve's hand close around his wrist. He lets out a little huff of anger instead, the touch alone reeling him back in. Tony's eyes flicker to the touch, the idiot genius not missing a thing. Bucky expects him to make some irritating, smartass comment, but he, miraculously, says nothing at all.

"There will be signals," Tony says. "There's a tone after each floor is unlocked. Tone is good. Sirens are bad. If the sirens go off, then everything has gone to shit and you gotta get out of there as soon as you fucking can."

Steve tenses, but nods.

"The Eyes aren't as hidden as we think they are," Tony says, looking directly at Bucky now. "An eye for an Eye means nothing. You have allies in the Citadel, but they won't look the way you expect them to."

"So how do we know who's trying to help us and who's trying to kill us, Tony?" Bucky asks, irritated.

"They know who you are," Tony says. "They'll show you their ink. If they can't do that, then wait for the person who asks you how the blind man sees."

"A blind man can't see," Bucky says, frowning. "He needs eyes."

Tony snaps and points at Bucky.

"There it is. Knew he wasn't all pretty hair and blue eyes, folks!"

Bucky snorts and rolls his own eyes. He's tense all over again, his shoulders stiff, his back aching.

"Get up where you need to go, Barnes," Tony says, his smirk dimming a bit. He looks from Bucky back to the blueprint again. "We'll do everything we can to get you in, but everything after that is you. Once you're up, you're up."

Bucky takes in a shaky breath and nods.

"It's all you," Tony says, and if he knows it's an albatross around Bucky's neck, well he doesn't notice that it's dragging Bucky under the water.  
  
  
Steve does, though.

Tony and Pepper leave to prepare the quinjet and the two of them are left in the room for a brief few minutes.

"Hey," Steve says and tugs Bucky's hand into his. "Is this okay? Are you okay?"

Bucky doesn't know how to answer that.

He supposes it's not easy to answer whether or not you're ready to sign your own death warrant.

"Steve," Bucky takes in a breath and says. He looks at him. "Just get me in and go. Don't—I don't want you in there. I want you far away."

Steve's face clouds over, his fingers tightening over Bucky's own.

"No," he says. "That's bullshit, I'm not going to—"

"That's not a _request_ ," Bucky says, voice hard. "What I have to do isn't—this isn't your burden. This isn't _your_ mission."

"If you think I’m going to drop you off to your death and fuck off, then fuck you and _fuck_ the mission," Steve growls. His expression grows darker by the second, hard and stormy.

"You will _listen to me_ ," Bucky says heatedly. He has his hand on Steve's chest. Then on his shoulder. Then on his neck. By the time his fingers are curled into Steve's soft, blond hair, he lets the air go out of him. "Please. This is my decision. Don't take that from me."

It's not a request he makes lightly and it's not one Steve accepts lightly either. He thinks Steve's going to reject it again, balk against the restraint, find a way to lash out, hurt, and angry. Then he remembers who this is. Whatever's going on between them, Steve is still the rock. He uses his head, not his heart.

“That’s not fair,” Steve says. “You don’t have to do this alone, Bucky.”

Bucky disagrees. This was only ever his to bear, alone.

Steve looks as though he knows, as though he might try to argue Bucky out of it. Whether he can’t or doesn’t think he’ll be able to, he doesn’t, though. And when Bucky cards his fingers through Steve's hair and leans up to press a kiss to his mouth, Steve lets him.

He's not happy about it—anything but. His eyes are dark, flashing angry. He's probably going to do something stupid, at some point.

But that's not Bucky's concern right now.

Right now, he's only worried about Steve hearing him, about Steve listening to him; about Steve opening his mouth and letting Bucky's tongue in, because what Bucky needs more than anything at this moment, right now, on the cusp of the final storm, is for someone to hold him and kiss him until he, just for a minute, forgets his name.  
  
  
They're led up to the third floor of Stark Tower, then shuttled into an old elevator that looks like it's been out of service for the past fifty years. It's all a ruse, evidently, because as soon as it opens and they step in, Bucky hears a jarringly familiar voice echo in the space around them.

"Third floor," JARVIS says politely.

"Take us to the sunroof," Tony says to the AI.

"Ah, very good sir," JARVIS says. "Fifth floor."

The elevator slides up through the shaft smoothly. Bucky can barely feel a thing. He would marvel at it more if he didn't have a heavy feeling in his stomach, like lead sinking through. Even Steve's presence doesn't help, his hand brushing against Bucky’s.

This is all leading to one thing and it's the one thing Bucky can't deny anymore—into the eye of the hurricane, the center of the storm. Whatever happens from here happens. And Bucky will either end up dead or they all will.

The elevator opens up onto the roof of Stark Tower in the middle of a brilliant, sunny day.

Everything is almost too bright for them and Bucky has to blink rapidly to keep his eyes from watering. Then he hears, surprisingly, a low whistle from Steve.

"Holy shit," Steve says. "Well, I'll be damned."

"You sound like an old Western movie," Tony mutters darkly, but he's too pleased with himself to fully cause a scene.

Once Bucky blinks away the sunlight, he understands why Steve couldn't help himself. In all of his life, Bucky's never seen anything like the quinjet; nothing so magnificent and certainly nothing so beautiful. It's all sleek chrome and smooth curves and so large it takes up nearly the entire roof.

Bucky walks toward it, his heart racing a little. He turns to Tony and the madman shrugs a little, still too pleased with himself. Bucky takes it as tacit permission and reaches forward, puts a hand on a hot chrome panel. It's absorbed all of the heat of day's heat, Bucky can nearly feel it under his touch. But the thing is—he doesn't. The metal feels as though there’s heat caught just underneath, but is itself cool to the touch.

"Special heat absorbing alloy," Tony mutters. "It's part of the masking device. Captures heat and reabsorbs it into the machinations of the quinjet, so it's not detectable by heat technology."

Being untraceable in the air is something Bucky hadn't expected. He feels a little jolt in his stomach—not thrill, exactly, but wonder, maybe.

"Stark, this is amazing," Bucky murmurs reluctantly, despite himself.

He can almost feel Tony preen next to him, but he can't even bring himself to care. This is something out of his deepest, science fiction fantasies. It's an absolute dream.

In another world, Bucky thinks, it could be like this all the time—technology everywhere, innovation rampant, geniuses like Shuri and Tony working toward the greater good in public and not behind closed, hidden doors.

Bucky lets out a sigh of yearning and looks up to see Steve on the other side, looking under a wing. He catches Steve's eyes under the jet itself and Steve smiles at him, a little in awe and goofy-looking himself. Even Steve Rogers can't escape a miracle when he sees it.

But neither can anyone else, is the thing. The quinjet is sleek and modern and an absolute vision of technology. That's the problem. There's nothing about it that will go undetected. They might as well fly a building into the Citadel.

"Stark," Bucky finally says, eyeing the beautiful monstrosity gleaming under the midday sun with a dread. "How the fuck do you expect us to take this in?"

Tony tilts his head, looking curiously smug.

"Come on, Barnes, that's simple," he says. "You want to get an illegal, flying vehicle into the most dangerous capital in the world, there's only one way to do it—you make it invisible."  
  
  
Tony fucking Stark engineered the quinjet with a masking device. A button, nice and bright blue, juts out from the console, next to all of the other levers and buttons that Steve will be using to fly them to the District. Press it and the entire aircraft is cloaked, each panel melting into the sky and surroundings, the whole plane turned invisible in broad daylight. Something about how the light is absorbed and refracts back, is what Tony tries to ramble on to them about. It's nothing short of a technological miracle, is the truth, which Bucky appreciates, but does not bother to tell Tony.

Soon, it's time to go.

Steve thanks Pepper with a kiss to her cheek and gives Tony a curt nod before climbing the ramp onto the jet. Tony eyes him with suspicion, even disdain, but manages to let him go without saying another word.

It's not a quick goodbye that Bucky, unfortunately, is able to manage. Tony catches him before he follows Steve up.

"Barnes," he says, catching Bucky by the elbow.

Bucky tries to ignore the hot irritation that flashes through him, even manages to stop his plates from pinching Tony's hand. Still, it's a close thing.

"What is it, Tony?" Bucky asks with clear ire.

"Listen—" Tony says, his eyes darting between Bucky and the quinjet behind him. "Look, hear me out."

"Give me one reason to," Bucky says, although he wants nothing of the sort. He crosses his arms at his chest and leans in to appearing as large as he actually is.

"I know—okay, maybe I could have handled all of that better last night," Tony says, with a frown. He doesn't strike Bucky as a man who gives apologies easily. "It's none of my business what your feelings toward him are, you can like whoever you like and fuck whoever you fuck."

Bucky raises his eyebrows, his mouth thinning dangerously.

"Don't give me that look! I know sexual tension when I see it!" Tony says. He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "You know him a hell of a lot better than I do. And maybe what you're saying is right—he saved you, he got you here, he's given you no reason to not trust him. But. There's something here that doesn't make sense and I'm not just saying that because I'm a dick and want to be right.Tell me you don't feel it."

Bucky glowers at Tony, is of half a mind to turn on his heels and walk away from him. But when he stops to listen to him—actually listen to him, he finds something like a frown forming on his lips.

"I don't—" Bucky starts and stops. He shifts from one foot to the other. "I don't know."

"Sure," Tony says. "That's fine. Fair, even. But—okay, just take this."

Tony reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a small yellow envelope, a rectangle just a little larger than Bucky's palm. He shoves it at Bucky and Bucky frowns, taking it from him.

"It's all in here," Tony says. "Read it and don't do anything stupid. Promise me."

Bucky doesn't like whatever it is he's holding. He doesn't like whatever is making Tony look like that—not smug, or arrogant, even, but worried. For once, Tony Stark looks like someone who actually cares what's going to happen.

"Okay," Bucky says. "I will."

Tony jerks his head, nodding, then steps back. He runs a hand through his hair again and it sticks up on its ends, making him look even madder than usual. After a moment, Pepper steps up next to him, slides her arm through his.

"Good luck, James," she says and Bucky can see her squeezing Tony's shoulder. He looks like he's going to have an aneurysm, but after a moment, his face grows a little less purple. Bucky envies that; having someone who knows exactly what to do and what you need and when.

"Come back in one piece, Barnes," Tony says. This time, it lacks any sort of artificiality. He's being sincere.

"If everything goes according to plan—" Bucky says, but Tony interrupts.

"Then we'll see you back here," Tony says. "When everything is different."

It's a heady, dizzying thought.

It doesn't fill him with inspiration, really, as he steps onto the bridge and heads into the quinjet. Everything is hanging in the balance, all hopes balanced on this one moment in time. Is he the person to do this? Were they right to trust him to finish this—to fix it all?

Bucky doesn't know if that's right, but he knows it's the only shot they have left.

He comes to stand next to Steve at the console. Steve looks like he's already learned all of the buttons. Bucky rests a hand on Steve's shoulder and Steve covers it with his own larger one for a moment, the warm, sustained contact soothing Bucky's nerve long enough to look ahead of them at the map projected on a screen in front of them.

"Where to, Captain?" Steve chuckles.

"Take us to the Citadel, Sergeant," Bucky says, throwing Tony’s package onto the seat next to Steve. "Time to hit them where it hurts."  
  
  
The quinjet moves quickly and quietly through the air, barely a jolt or a sound out of place, despite how large it is. It surprises Bucky to feel as though he is standing still, mid-air. Steve presses the invisibility cloak before they take off and that's surprising too, to be able to see the solid metal disc they're in, but know no one else can.

The sky is a bright blue, with some clouds dispersed throughout their air terrain. They slide through them easily, although Bucky holds his breath every once in a while when it feels as though they're going to hit against one.

Steve, for his part, navigates like he's been flying his entire life. Nothing about this startles him. Nothing about anything startles him. Bucky thinks back to the moment in Liberty City when they both met; Steve had leaned in, pressed a kiss to a stranger's mouth, and just shot.

Bucky doesn't know what it's like to be that sure of yourself, but he's glad that if he has to trust someone to carry them on a death trap through the sky, it's Steve. As for himself, he's not entirely convinced the quinjet won't start to freefall the first moment it gets the chance. It makes his stomach queasy, his body jumpy with nervous energy.

The flying time isn't long, according to Tony's screen. A little under two hours.

That sets Bucky's nerves alight. He sits down hard on the seat next to Steve's, looking out at the impossible sky all around them, and tries to swallow his anxiety.

"The window is small, but not impossible," Steve is murmuring, his eyes scanning the clear blue ahead of them.

"Steve," Bucky says, puts a hand on Steve's wrist.

Steve turns to look at him and Bucky wishes there was something else there other than—nothing. Steve is always so carefully wiped clean that Bucky can only trace the lines around his eyes and the tight corners of his mouth to try to understand what he's holding inside him.

Bucky swallows, watches that mouth and looks back up into Steve's eyes.

"Tell me it's going to be okay," Bucky says quietly. "Lie to me."

Steve doesn't say anything for a long minute. When he does speak, the space between his brows is furrowed.

"You don't want that," Steve says. "You're not someone who suffers lies."

Bucky's stomach twists dully, maybe with the truth, maybe with the knowledge that even here, hundreds of miles above the ground, Steve can see through to the core of him.

"Maybe that's what I need," Bucky says. "Here, at the end of the world. Am I doing what's right? Is this what's worth fighting for? I used to think I knew. I thought it couldn't get any worse, I didn't have anything left to lose. All I wanted was revenge."

Bucky doesn't want to say it out loud, the selfish want that curls into the brambles of his heart.

Steve looks at Bucky with such clarity that he feels his breath leave him. He runs a thumb against Bucky's wrist and his heart hammers in his chest.

"Do you still want revenge?" Steve asks him softly.

"Yes," Bucky says, and he does. It has its claws in his chest too, in his stomach, poisonous roots in his brain, tangled all around him. They had taken everything from him—his father, his mother, even his sister. Every good thing Bucky had ever known, HYDRA had coveted and HYDRA had destroyed. They had destroyed him too, or so Bucky had thought.

Steve moves his hand, then laces his fingers through Bucky's. He can feel the warmth of Steve, the solidity of him, and he feels the need echo through him, like an ache he can't wish away.

"Do you think there's any good left in me?" Bucky asks him. "Or is all that's left of me a forgotten promise made to my dead parents?"

"I think," Steve says quietly and Bucky is—surprised. He looks at Steve closely and he can see the cracks there, clear as day, the places where his mask is breaking. "The only thing that's left of you is good."

Bucky feels himself warm, despite every effort otherwise.

"That's..." Bucky frowns and Steve tugs him closer, one hand at Bucky's lower back until Bucky is straddling him on the chair, hands on Steve's shoulders.

"I don't say things I don't mean," Steve says and Bucky believes that. "HYDRA took something from you it had no right to, but you stayed and you fought. Revenge, vengeance, determination—does it matter what you call it? The heart of it is the same."

Bucky exhales and Steve traces a hand up his flesh arm.

"It doesn't feel that way," Bucky says. "It feels like I'm being consumed. I'm so angry, all the time. And it didn't matter before, I could die in that fire and be happy."

And wasn't that the truth? When it had been just him, he hadn't had any second thoughts. Natasha had offered him the disc, asked him if it meant his life to save the world, and Bucky had said yes. It wasn't a world that had any meaning to him anymore. It’s easy to die for ideals when ideals are all you have left. But.

"But it matters now?" Steve asks. Bucky feels his fingers in his hair, nails against his scalp and he could die from it, the brush of Steve Rogers against him. He feels it somewhere past his sternum, in a place he has never wanted to name.

"I wish," Bucky says, swallowing. He reaches up too, takes strands of Steve's golden hair and twists it around his fingers.

"Don't start lying to me now," Steve says with half a smile and Bucky traces that too, a thumb pressed to the corner of Steve's lips.

"I wish we had more time," Bucky says. "Is that selfish?"

He knows the answer. He wants Steve to say something different.

"Yes," Steve says, unable to lie. "But you're allowed that, Buck. You're allowed to be selfish when you're doing this—unbelievable thing."

"I'd still do it," Bucky says and he knows this to be true too. "Even if I had met you before Natasha asked me. I'd still put everything on the line."

"Even if it meant we could never be together?" Steve asks.

"Even then," Bucky answers.

He doesn't want to break Steve's heart and he doesn't. Instead, Steve smiles. Bucky has to swallow the little shocks that ripple through him. He knows every smile Steve has to offer, but he's never seen one that reaches his eyes.

This one does, though, and that's why he knows Steve means it when he says, "That's how I know you're good, Bucky Barnes."

Steve brings Bucky down to him and when they kiss, it moves through Bucky like molasses, slow and sweet and thick. He gives Steve an inch and Steve takes more, moving more firmly against his mouth, his hand raking through Bucky's hair, the air between them warm, moving with the sound of their breathing and the mingled beating of their hearts.

It's not as though he doesn't know; the reason for his doubt, why he has woken up in the middle of the night, fingers around his necklace, wondering if there isn't another way. But here, pressed against Steve, head dizzy with feeling, hurtling through the air impossibly fast, it sits in his chest like an anchor; the one, undeniable, immovable truth; a truth he can hold in the palm of his hands.

But it doesn't matter now anyway.

It's too late for something as fickle as love.  
  
  
Maybe in another world, during another time, it really would have been different. He and Steve could have met doing something else, something normal, maybe as kids on the paper route, or in school, sitting next to each other in class, or even at a bar, Steve blond and beautiful at the other end, Bucky unable to keep his eyes off of him. They could have gone out, gotten to know each other, Bucky learning the way Steve is quick to laugh and slow to warm, Steve learning how Bucky's thoughts are always in the clouds, how he looks up at the sky and wonders what other worlds are just beyond their reach. They would have kissed slow, in the rain, Steve's breath warming Bucky's lips, Bucky's arms around Steve's impossibly broad shoulders, Steve's nose nudging Bucky's own, Bucky's heart caught in an endless series of loops, tumbling at each pass of their lips. The world would move slowly around them, warm and whole, the only cracks those beneath their feet, the only weariness that it had taken them so long to meet at all.

Bucky could have met his Ma, asked to look at pictures of Steve when he was younger, held his hand under the table, leaned into him as they ate dinner, kissed him warmly before going down the hallway to the guest bedroom. Bucky's father would have met Steve at the door, commented on how he had a good handshake. Bucky's mother would have cooked for Steve, asked him what he liked to read, and tried to feed him thirds and fourths even after he said he was full. Becca would have laughed, teased Bucky about finding someone so handsome, so out of his league. And Steve would have smiled and that smile would have reached his eyes, hand ruffling through his hair, cheeks pink, and Bucky wouldn't have been able to help himself, he would have laughed and kissed Steve there, in front of God and his parents. Maybe they would have gone out, eating or dancing, somewhere happy, maybe under the stars.

They could have had some kind of future. They could have had some kind of a proper ending.  
  
  
It's not that kind of world, though.

Bucky gasps as Steve's nails dig into his back. Steve's mouth is hot on his, his hands hot on Bucky's skin, and Bucky's nearly licked up in the fire of him, in the heat of them, face wet with possibilities that never can and never will be.

He doesn't tell Steve he loves him. He thinks it, but he doesn’t. What would be the point of it now? It doesn’t matter anyway, because he never gets the chance to.

Steve kisses him hard, swallowing Bucky’s gasp, and Bucky opens his eyes, just as the sirens go off.

 **IMPACT** , it says on the screen, just before they start falling from the sky.  
  
  
The shot hits one of the wings, the surface-to-air missile crushing into the metal with an explosive sound that shatters the peace between them. Steve and Bucky both curse as they peel apart, panic pumping through them. Steve turns back to the controls, flipping buttons and switches, cursing furiously as a second impact sends Bucky sprawling across the floor and Steve nearly smashing into the controls.

"Hold on!" Steve yells and Bucky barely manages to grasp onto the handle of the second seat, fighting against the momentum of the falling quinjet to heave himself on top. He lets out a grunt, his plates shifting loudly and they rock forward again, the whole quinjet lurching, the sirens loud and piercing.

Steve himself almost goes careening into the front window, grunting in pain as he smashes against the bottom half of the console. He growls, pulls himself up and pushes some more buttons, pulls a lever with some effort, and then suddenly the quinjet wobbles to a forty five degree angle. It gives them enough stability to pull out of the nosedive. Another missile barely misses them and Bucky hisses, gritting his teeth so hard that his jaw nearly locks from the effort. The adrenaline spikes so fast and so hard in him, his heart feels like it's trying to break free from his chest. His head is buzzing with static, threatening to wipe clean in the imminent danger of the moment.

 **INCOMING** , the screen flashes bright red, in large block letters and Bucky curses, reaches for one of the levers he's certain is a steering device. They spin mid-air again, twice, before slanting sideways, falling through at an angle that misses the shot altogether.

"Buckle!" Steve shouts and Bucky hurls himself into the seat as best as he can, fumbling with the seatbelt while his world spins, his vision nearly going dark with the force.

Bucky manages to clip himself in just as Steve punches a button and pulls the biggest lever and then Bucky's stomach drops, Steve pulling them out of the dive so fast Bucky's head is still spinning when he realizes they're almost horizontal now. Everything around them vibrates, as though they've hit a patch of air that they're grinding through like gravel. Bucky clenches his teeth again, if only to stop them from rattling out of his head.

"Landing!" Steve warns just as the screen flashes bright red again, with the word, **IMMINENT IMPACT**.

Bucky grasps the edges of his seat, knuckles turning white with effort. Steve pushes the lever one more time and there's a loud pop and something like the sound of ground being scraped against the bottom of metal and the quinjet hits the landing pad with an air-rending screech, before skidding forward a hundred yards.

"Fuck," Bucky yells, punching into the console with his metal hand. The console crumples upon impact. "Fuck!"

The quinjet jars forward once, jolting both of them in their seats, before coming to a complete stop. What's left in its wake is a silence and stillness so complete that it's just as jarring as the crash had been. Bucky sits, teeth grit, his heart rate spiking, trying not to take gasping breaths to come back into himself. His entire body is vibrating with angry, unspent energy. His brain is working hard to catch up to the rest of him.

There's no time to think about how this happened or how to fix it. They've been shot out of the sky, their ten minute opening, their careful plans—all of it, just shot to fucking hell. There's no time to come up with a new plan; now there's only way—and that's out.  
  
  
Steve unlocks the safety on both of his guns, his colts in his hands, his duster hanging low. He doesn't look rattled, but he looks grim. Bucky has his guns too, one in either hand, his knives still strapped to his thighs and to the bands at his arms. He's not wearing his flesh covering; it doesn't matter anymore anyway. His metal arm shines brightly in the dim lighting of the quinjet's cabin. His plates hiss and move and he gets a grim satisfaction from that.

Bucky's blood pumps hot, his mind on a razor's edge, balanced between the Winter Soldier, the weapon HYDRA sharpened him to be, and the person he is now, Bucky Barnes and everything that has shaped him.

He doesn't have to hear the shouting outside or the loud tread of heavy boots against gravel, the clicking and shifting of firearms. He knows that HYDRA is out there, waiting. They’ve run out of time.

Bucky tucks the disc under his collar. He doesn't know what he'll do or how he'll do it, but he knows that he'll do it, without hesitation.

"I'll distract them," Steve says. "I'll cover you, Buck. You take that chance and go."

"Steve—" Bucky says, trying to swallow past the hard lump in his throat. He wants to say _Steve, no_ , or _there has to be another way or come with me_. He knows he can't, though, and he knows Steve can't either. Whoever the Eyes have on the inside are still on the inside and Steve and Bucky—they're out here, left to deal with the fallout.

So Bucky wants to tell Steve to leave, to save himself, but he also knows that Steve can't and, what's more, that Steve won't.

Here, at the end of all things, they'll both do what needs to be done.

"Whatever happens," Steve says, catching Bucky before he slides open the door, hand on his face. "Remember what I said."

"What?" Bucky asks, looking into his coyote's blue eyes, now dark and stormy.

"You're a good person," Steve says. "And what you're doing—it's worth it. Standing and fighting for what you believe in, that's worth doing."

"Steve—" Bucky says, but Steve shakes his head and presses his mouth against Bucky, hard and quick. There's no feeling there, but there's also too much feeling.

It tastes like a hello, and feels like a goodbye.

"I was wrong," Steve says. "I want you to know that, Buck. I was wrong to give up hope."

"Steve," Bucky tries again, throat burning, but Steve doesn't let him. He kisses Bucky again, one last time.

"I love you," Steve says. "I want you to know that too. I love you, Bucky. And, I'm sorry."

Then, shoving Bucky out of the way, Steve slides open the lock, kicks open the door, and starts shooting.  
  
It's a hail of firestorm is what Bucky will remember, later. Bucky's heart, beating out of his chest, the one moment of pure, panicked melancholy—Steve, ahead of him, guns out, eyes blazing. It's a difficult thing, to see the person you love take bullets for you, in front of your eyes, and it's no easier knowing it's something that has to be done.

Bucky lifts his gun, shifts his metal arm, holds it up in front of him to deflect bullets, and then, with a scream, runs into the gunfight.  
  
Bucky feels the bullets try to bite into his metal arm and he physically moves them away, blocking shots as though they're balls being tossed at him. His adrenaline spikes again and he lifts his guns, finds his targets and shoots. There are a fuckton of State soldiers, but they shoot indiscriminately and Bucky shoots with purpose. Steve finds his marks and Bucky finds his. State soldiers fall and they're replaced by more. Steve and Bucky are surrounded by a circle of them, dressed in black, masks covering their faces, armed to the fucking teeth with rifles.

Bucky shouts and barrels at the nearest one. The State soldier tries to shoot him, but Bucky gets to him first, pulling up his knee to hit him in the groin and then shooting him point blank between the eyes. The Soldier grunts and falls to his knees and then Bucky's on the next one, his Winter Soldier brain starting to spread across his fraying consciousness. He elbows one in the head and rams the barrel of his gun into the nose of another. HYDRA soldiers fall, one by one, but not without taking their own shots. Bucky feels a hot searing pain bite into his side and then another graze his flesh arm. He grits his teeth, swallowing his own gasp of pain and takes it out on the soldiers twofold.

He's almost fought his way to the edge of the circle, about to break through, when he hears a shout of pain from a familiar voice.

It's stupid, he knows it's stupid, and will later think, how fucking stupid, but Bucky doesn't think twice now before turning back to Steve. It's one second of hesitation too much, because Bucky doesn't see the soldier behind him. He has his eyes locked on the red blossoming at Steve's side and it's then that he feels hands close around his flesh shoulder.

"Bucky, _no_ ," Steve shouts out through teeth grit with pain, but it's too little too late.

Bucky shouts a curse and tries to break free, fighting against his captors, using all of his strength as the Winter Soldier to struggle against his restraints, but there are two, three, four pairs of hands on him, shoving him to his knees. Someone shoves a gun to the back of Bucky's neck and he tries to twist to spit on him.

"Down," the soldier says coldly, before taking his gun and slamming the butt into Bucky's temple.

Stars burst across the black of Bucky's vision and he gasps before everything goes dark.  
  
  
When he comes back into himself, he finds his arms bound behind him and two State soldiers holding him guard, one on either side of him. He's still kneeling, his knees digging into the ground, his legs cramping from having been held there for God knows how long.

Bucky tastes iron in his mouth and when he opens his mouth to spit, it comes out in the bright red of blood. Nausea roils through him, his head pounding.

The soldiers are stationed around them, the two behind him, and a line of them standing in between him and—

"Steve," Bucky rasps.

Steve is being held by two soldiers too; he's standing, but barely. His scar is twisting with his face, another fresh cut bleeding across his forehead, another gash along his jaw. His tunic is torn, his duster ripped in half. Steve seems to be wincing in pain and it's no wonder—the red spot at his side seems to have grown larger.

"Please," Bucky says and hates that he does. "Let him go. He's—fuck, he's bleeding."

"He should not have resisted so," a voice cuts through the quiet of the clearing. "Really, it was...unnecessary of him. Overly dramatic."

Bucky—he feels the chill draw over him slowly, like an egg cracked over his head, the yolk trickling slowly down his spine. His nausea increases tenfold. His vision swims in front of him.

"Hello James," Alexander Pierce, the Titan's Right Hand, says.

He looks exactly like Bucky remembers him, to the extent his memory allows him to remember a man who is little more than a monster. Silver hair, wrinkled face, a blue suit that makes him look human when he is anything but.

Alexander Pierce, his captor and tormentor, the instrumental lead in his torture and the systematic torture and hunting of Resistance members across the country.

"It really has been too long," Pierce says mildly. "I see you got yourself a new arm."

Bucky swallows a cocktail of emotions, all bad. He's not afraid of Alexander Pierce, not anymore, but his brain is having a difficult time extracting his memories from what he's seeing in front of him. It all swims together, the past, the present,his torture, the slow, condescending smirk of the man in front of him.

"Now James, you went away for so long, you nearly hurt my feelings," Pierce says. "If it weren't for my friend here, you might never have come home to me."

Bucky—he's spitting angry and hurt and at his wit's end, but this, he doesn't miss. He stares at Pierce.

"What?" he rasps out.

"My friend," Pierce says, still infuriatingly mild. Then, a slow, terrible smile spreads across his face. "Steve Rogers. You've met him, right?"

Bucky, he, doesn't understand.

"Steve," Bucky says, staring. He can feel himself disassociating under the shock of it. "What—Steve, what about him?"

"Oh James," Pierce says. "You didn't think he was there to help you, did you? That would have been quite the coincidence."

Pierce gives Bucky a smile under the face of his confusion, his dawning dread and numb horror.

"He's a gun-for-hire," Pierce says. "A mercenary. A bounty hunter. Did he not tell you? We wanted you for a price and he was willing to be paid for it.”

“He’s—” Bucky says. “That’s not. You’re lying.”

“Am I?” Pierce asks. He gives Bucky a curious look and then turns toward the State soldiers holding Steve. He nods at them. “Let him go."

Immediately, the soldiers release Steve and he goes crumpling to his knees.

"Bucky," Steve says, shaking his head.

Bucky can't quite grasp it. Pierce's stare, his crooked smile, the words that are refusing to sink into his brain. Bucky doesn't understand any of it.

He doesn't understand why Steve would betray him—how he would betray him. He knows Steve. Bucky _knows_ him.

He doesn't accept it.

Until he does.

Because Pierce can lie; he can do a lot of things.

But Steve can't.

And one look at Steve's face, at the anguish writ plain across his features, and Bucky knows it to be true.

He knows, under the crushing, howling pain rippling through his body, that it's true.

"Bucky," Steve tries again—he has the fucking _nerve_ to try again. "I'm sorry—Please, listen to me—"

"You _traitor_ ," Bucky manages to find his voice again. He's so angry he can feel it in his blood, the poison seeping through, the rage sweeping through his limbs, making him quiver. He tries to lunge forward, but the State soldiers have him, pull him back toward them. " _You monstrous, motherfucking traitor_."

"Bucky, let me explain—" Steve says, but Bucky's past letting Steve speak. His fury is a living, breathing, pulsing thing; he can feel it alight in his chest. He tries to pull away again, his plates shifting, his head pounding, his mind on the edge of being ripped away from his consciousness.

" _You asshole!_ " Bucky screams. "You _coward!_ "

His vision blurs in front of him, something hot and wet streaking down his face. He feels the betrayal rock through his body, break across it like waves against the shore.

“I trusted you,” Bucky seethes. “ _I trusted you_.”

"Please," Steve begs. "I'm not— I wasn't going to give you to them—"

" _Liar!_ " Bucky yells and at that, Alexander Pierce chuckles.

"Don't be so modest, Mr. Rogers," Pierce says. "You've gotten exactly what you wanted."

Pierce reaches into his suit and comes away with a black, velvet bag. Inside, Bucky can hear coins jangling. They slide and clink against each other, each noise a reminder that Steve did this— _Steve fucking did this_ , sold him and the Eyes out for a bag of gold.

“As advertised,” Pierce says, the slimy motherfucker. “Five hundred gold pieces.”

Pierce throws the bag at Steve's feet and the mouth opens, the coins skittering into the dirt.

Bucky stares at the gold, his fury turning cold. He’s at once on fire and being doused by something numbing, ice crawling up his veins.

"Oh it was all very good," Pierce says with a self-satisfied smile. "We had put out so many bulletins for you, James, but no one could catch you. It was luck, I presume, that Rogers found you in Liberty City. Well, no. He found some idiot talking to the barkeep about how he was meeting someone special there. Waiting for someone. An eye for an Eye, some nonsense like that."

Pierce's laugh is high and cruel. Bucky barely keeps himself from vomiting, the miasma of bad feelings swirl so viciously in his stomach.

"Well, it didn't take much convincing," Pierce says graciously. "Did it, Steven—can I call you Steven? A few drinks, a smile, I assume. Anyway, your _real_ idiot coyote told him everything and it wasn't so difficult for him to take his place, was it?"

"It was you," Bucky says, feeling sick. "You're the reason they came for us in Miller's Town. You told them where we were going, every step of the way."

At that, Pierce frowns.

"Well, not exactly," he says. "Steven only called us after Liberty City, to say he had you. Everything after that was easy enough to track. Did you think you were being subtle, you silly boy? We have eyes everywhere. Hail HYDRA."

Bucky's head is spinning with the magnitude of it—the deception, the missteps. The web of lies Steve had spun between them, right under Bucky’s feet. Every time Bucky had thought they were safe and every time they weren't. Steve had been a stranger this entire time. Tony was—

"Fuck," Bucky says.

"Excuse me?" Pierce frowns again.

" _Fuck_ ," Bucky says and then—abruptly, he starts laugh. "Fuck, Stark was right. _Fuck_. Stark was right and _you knew it_. You _bastard._ "

"Bucky, listen to me," Steve tries and Bucky is infuriated to hear how wrecked he sounds, as though he’s full of regret, as though _any of this matters to him_. "I'm sorry—I didn't, when I found you, I was a different person. I was messed up in the head, I had lost everything, Bucky, I didn't—I thought it didn't matter anymore, what I did. What did my actions matter, when there was no hope anywhere? I lost sight of everything, until I met you. I was miserable. I was _wretched_."

Bucky could spit on him.

"That's your excuse for selling me out?" he shouts. "You were so sad and fucking jaded that you _became a mercenary for HYDRA_?"

Steve winces and Bucky could throw himself at him, close his fingers around Steve's throat, scratch his blue eyes out.

"That's not a fucking _excuse_ , Steve," Bucky spits. "That's cowardice. You're a fucking _coward_."

"I know," Steve says. His eyes are wet, his voice hoarse. "I was wrong. I was so fucking wrong. I fucked up. _I fucked everything up_."

" _Fuck you_ ,” Bucky says venomously. “Fuck you and your apology. They would hate who you are. Peggy, Howard—all of those people _you_ let die. They fucking died for you and you went and sold out their deaths to HYDRA. Does that make you feel good, Steve? _Does it_? What, if you can't beat them, join them? Fuck you, Rogers, _fuck you_."

Steve looks like Bucky punched him in the gut. It's less than he fucking deserves. Bucky would ruin him if he could.

It pulses in him, the hurt, the anger, and, beneath all of that, something Bucky can't touch without self-immolating. He can’t breathe. _He can’t fucking breathe_.

"I'm sorry," Steve begs, on his knees. "I'm so, so sorry."

It's not enough. It might never be fucking enough.

Bucky looks at him with loathing and something close to despair, this person he had grown to trust, a person he knows he loves.

"Oh, enough of this," Alexander Pierce says, watching the two of them with increasing disinterest. "I have no time for theatrics. It's time for you to tell me, James, why you're here."

And it's only then, surrounded by Pierce and the State soldiers, hurt and betrayed, bleeding, on his knees, Bucky thinks he truly feels the meaning of the word defeat, the heavy, crushing weight of the word loss.

It's only then, having lost everything he's ever had, having failed the only thing he's ever wanted to finish, that Bucky thinks, in despair—

This is it. This is the end of all things.

*

_i wear this crown of thorns_  
_upon my liars chair_  
_full of broken thoughts_  
_i cannot repair_  
[hurt; johnny cash](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ffFaJSDv9g)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters will go up tomorrow--the final chapter + the epilogue/aftermath. 
> 
> I promise everything will get better.


	10. the citadel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For every person there's a _before_ and an _after_.
> 
> For Bucky, there's a third point: _at the end_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once more unto the breach ♥

_come ride with me_  
_through the veins of history_  
_i'll show you a God_  
_falls asleep on the job_

*

**the citadel.**

  
Bucky swallows, his head swimming. He closes his eyes, gathers the strength to his core, and spits.

"Over my dead body," he growls.

Pierce looks at him with something in between pity and curiosity.

"We don't need to do that," he says. It's not quite a sneer, but then, Alexander Pierce has never really needed to sneer. "I took you apart once, James. Do you think I won't be able to again?"

Despite himself, Bucky can't quite stop from balking at that, his body physically reacting to the very thought of it. It remembers being ripped apart; remembers healing, only to be disassembled again. The memories are scarred into his skin, the pain lingering in his bones in a way he will never be able to fully shake.

"You remember, don't you?" Pierce says and this time his smile is almost malevolent. "I will make you remember everything. I will take more than your arm this time, I will take everything you are and you will not be getting it back. Every truth of yours will be mine. You are my weapon. I will turn you against those you love, I will make you into their very undoing—you are mine, James, you are my weapon, you—"

Pierce stops mid-sentence and Bucky, whose head has been filled with a growing, panicked, piercing white noise, doesn't know why. He looks at Pierce blindly, blankly, and it's only when the hands on his arms go slack that he realizes Pierce has stopped talking altogether.

That's not to say he's stopped making noise.

He makes an awful gurgling, screeching kind of sound, and then Bucky realizes he's holding his hands to his throat. There's red blossoming underneath, blood spilling through his fingers.

Pierce lets out an inhuman gasp, dark eyes wide, and then, shocked, falls to his knees. He's dead before his body hits the ground.

There's only a single breath for his mind to reel, just one moment when everything stills from surprise.

Bucky stares at Pierce's body blankly and behind him sees Steve, gun in his hand, raised, the end still smoking.

"Steve," Bucky breathes out, his heart stuttering.

"Bucky, run," Steve says.

Then all hell breaks loose.  
  
  
Bucky hears the shots fired before he gets a chance to react. The two pairs of hands let go of him and he gasps as he goes sprawling to his feet. He twists immediately, ready to throw his knives, but he's stopped short, one of the HYDRA soldiers lifting their gun—not at him, but against the other soldier. Bucky barely has the chance to blink before the soldier knees the other soldier in the groin. The other soldier grunts in surprise and the first soldier takes that moment of distraction to shoot him in the chest. The other soldier collapses to the ground, mouth open, and the first soldier turns back toward Bucky.

Bucky slips out a knife and raises it in the blink of an eye, heart pounding, mind slipping, but the soldier shakes their head.

"How do you make a blind man see?" the soldier—a woman says. Bucky doesn't recognize her voice, but he recognizes the accent. She sounds like T'Challa and Shuri do. "Go, Bucky Barnes. Run."

Bucky doesn't have a chance to thank her or to even think. She turns as a group of State soldiers move on her, elbowing them forcefully, shooting them in close range. The gun goes skittering out of her hand as one of the soldiers forces her arm backward and she grunts, headbutting him, and then grasping his arm, flips him over. He lands with a hard thud and she grabs something from her side, a small metal baton that she flips out into a long, hard pole.

"Are you _stupid_?" she shouts. "Go. _Go_!"

Bucky stumbles to his feet with a curse.

He looks back only once—a single time, to see if he can catch a flash of gold. He does and it's almost worse, the way his stomach and heart twist at the same time.

"Run!" Steve shouts at Bucky again, just before two State soldiers hurl themselves at him. "Bucky— _run_!"

Bucky doesn't want to, but he doesn't have a fucking choice.

He takes a shaking, horrible breath, and fucking runs.  
  
  
The HYDRA soldiers outside are scattered, in a frenzied mess of confusion in the aftermath of Pierce's fall. Bucky can hear the Eye and Steve in the background, distantly, or at least he can hear gunshots and shouts, screams that he hopes aren't from them. He pounds through confused soldiers, elbowing some and shooting others, trying to clear a path for himself. A soldier turns in confusion and then, eyes widening, lunges for him. Bucky pants, ducks out of his outstretched arms, and throws a knife into his back. The soldier screams and falls and Bucky keeps running.

His feet eat through the ground, clods of dirt flying under the tread of his boots. He can feel his adrenaline surging, his heart racing, beads of sweat gathering at his temples and sliding down his face. His eyes are dilated, his vessels the same. His arm feels heavy as it whirrs through the air. He lifts it and smashes his fist into the face of the next soldier that tries to grab him. The soldier crumples under the force and Bucky spins out of the grasp of another.

Close, he thinks wildly, the Citadel's entrance looming in front of him. Closer.

Bucky starts hearing the sirens halfway down the stone walkway leading up to the entrance. There's only one way into the Citadel—the front. The rest of the black obelisk towers of him, roughly hewn, tall, dark, threatening with its possibilities. This is the heart of HYDRA, the head of it. Inside, somewhere, the Titan wears his gauntlet and rules over the country with his iron fist. Bucky looks up just in time to see guards with rifles. They stare down at him, aim, and shoot.

The bullets bite into the ground all around him, grinding up gravel and stone, spraying Bucky with debris that chips against any exposed skin. A large chunk upends in front of him and he has to jump over it, nearly tripping over his feet, but he keeps going. He keeps running, eyes on the entrance, and when he sees the four armed guards at the top of the stone steps, raising their guns toward him, he doesn't hesitate.

He raises his own colts and fucking shoots.  
  
  
He's over their bodies and running down the first circular floor, when someone grabs his elbow, whirls him around, and slams him against the wall.

Bucky lets out a shout of frustration and lifts his metal arm, metal fingers seeking throat, but the person ducks out of his grasp and too little, too late, he feels a knife to his neck.

"Relax," a harsh, familiar voice hisses. He can barely hear her over the sirens, the sounds and signs of chaos around them, but he recognizes the tone. He sees the green eyes and the red hair only a moment later.

"Nat," Bucky rasps out. "Natasha."

Relief floods into all of the spaces in his body that he hadn't realized were empty. It makes his head spin, the rush of the moment.

"We don't have much time," Natasha Romanoff says and releases Bucky. "Everything's going off everywhere. Everything is moving, James."

Bucky nearly stumbles forward, but catches himself against her shoulder. Natasha, who is a good foot shorter than him, frowns as she holds him up.

"Are you okay?" she asks.

"Fine," he grunts. He knows he's been shot somewhere, but he doesn't know where and he doesn't have the time to find out. "Need to go up, Nat. Seventh floor."

Natasha looks at him warily, although it's a calculated look. He can almost see her mapping out the hallways and exits.

"The Citadel moves like a spiral," Natasha says. She has her gun up to her chest and she nods at Bucky, forces him to follow her.

He doesn't have to be told twice. He drops one of his guns, having emptied its cartridge outside, and checks the other. It's maybe half full.

"We'll get you another," Natasha says, knowing, without looking, what Bucky's checking.

Bucky grunts and follows her. They move quickly over stone floors as black as the walls of the tower. She wasn't kidding—the floors move as a spiral, each curving around a central part of the tower where all of the rooms are clustered together. Some of the rooms are locked shut and some, he can hear from floors above, are being emptied out as the sirens continue blaring.

The sound is high-pitched and jarring, shaking through Bucky, the discordant noise sinking in through his skin. He has to grit his teeth as they run and when they meet the first host of soldiers jogging from the second floor down, it's almost a relief for Bucky to lift his gun and fire.

The soldiers don't see it coming, so they fall to the bullets, Bucky and Natasha taking them out methodically, as a team. Natasha reaches down and picks up a gun from one of their curled fingers and looks up at Bucky, tosses it to him.

"You'll need it," she says, although he can barely hear her over the noise. "Come on. If we don't get you to the top, nothing's going to matter. You have to shut this down, James. It's the only way."

As if Bucky doesn't fucking know that.

He grits his teeth and grasps both guns in his hands.

"Where is he, Nat?" Bucky asks as they hurtle past more fallen soldiers. "Where's the fucking Titan?"

Natasha lets out a cold, low laugh.

"Guess we're going to find out, aren't we?" Natasha says and then throws open a door at the end of the first floor and starts sprinting her way up a set of curved stone stairs.  
  
  
A tone rings out around them, joining the cacophony of the sirens and the screaming, and Bucky distantly remembers Tony’s instructions as he pants and throws out his guns as he rounds the corner. He fires preemptively and at least two soldiers give shouts before thudding to the ground.

They throw themselves around the curve of the second floor spiral too, bodies flooding out through open doors, some dressed as HYDRA soldiers, some dressed in lab suits, or normal suits. They don’t spare any thoughts or sympathies. Natasha slides to her knees to trip one of the soldiers and throws her guns to clock two other soldiers in the head. Bucky shoots two men in lab coats in the legs and shouts at Natasha as he throws her one of the guns.

Natasha pants out, snatches it out of the air, and puts it against the temple of a soldier lurching at her.

She pulls the trigger and they jump over bodies.  
  
  
Bucky wrenches open the doorway to the stairs, his side bleeding, his breaths coming in shallow as he tries to inhale around a stitch in his side.

The tone of the unlocked stairway resounds again and he pounds ahead this time, Natasha at his heels.

He ducks as he hears shuffling at the doorway to the third floor and Natasha gets the hint, shots ringing out over his head.

They skitter out onto the third floor, Bucky’s heart pounding so hard his teeth are nearly chattering with the effort. At the end of the hallway, hunkered down with a semi-automatic, is a man in a HYDRA uniform, without the mask. His hair is dark brown and a sneer pulls at the corners of his mouth.

“Well, well, well. Romanoff,” the man grins menacingly. “I told them not to trust you.”

“Rumlow,” Natasha grunts out. Bucky reaches out his metal arm, as though to shield her, but she knocks it out of the way. “Should have talked louder.”

“Killing you’s going to make my entire week,” Rumlow sneers.

“Guess I’m gonna have to ruin your week then,” Natasha says, raising an eyebrow.

“Come get me, bitch,” Rumlow bares his teeth and the remark goes to Bucky’s gut, lights a fire that licks up his spine.

Natasha doesn’t seem to be shaking like Bucky is. Instead, she gives Rumlow a grim smile.

“I told you last time, _Brock_ ,” Natasha says and shifts her guns in her hands. “Give me something worth taking seriously.”

Rumlow’s face twists in anger and Natasha reacts.

“ _Run!_ ” she screams and runs ahead of him, shedding her guns and launching herself at the larger man.

Bucky doesn’t have time to think, Rumlow’s trying to shoot Natasha and his bullets are shattering walls, eating stone and tile, and Natasha throws herself onto him, her thighs around his neck, his arms scrabbling at her.

“ _Natasha!_ ” Bucky shouts, but someone grabs his arm and hurls him down the hallway.

He looks back, ready to shoot, but sees a woman with blue paint across her skin and what is clearly a fake eye, animatronic arms.

“The blind man can’t see if you kill him,” the woman says harshly. “Leave her, Romanoff knows what she’s doing.”

This woman—“ _Nebula_ ,” she hisses out—is wearing a HYDRA uniform, just like the woman with the pole outside had been. The Eyes have had bodies inside the Citadel all along. Many of them.

The realization doesn’t really hit Bucky over the head the way he had expected it to.

Instead he sucks in a breath, ignores the burning in his limbs, and follows her.  
  
  
It’s death and devastation every floor they pass, which is how he knows this really is the end game. The doors open up from the rooms in the middle and people stream out, some with guns, others with nothing at all. It’s violence, everywhere he looks, his head buzzing with it, the physical nature of the apocalypse. Nebula is lethal with a gun, even worse with her bare hands. She grunts as she snaps necks and Bucky ducks behind her, sweeps feet out from under soldiers as they go.

It’s the way everything falls apart, an attack from within, an attack from without. This is how regimes fall, not in silence, but with reverberating screams and pools of blood.

Nebula punches in a code between the fourth floor and fifth and shoves Bucky into the stairwell.

“Nebula!” a voice calls behind her and Nebula slows, turning, with a cold, smile on her face.

“Proxima,” she says.

“The Winter Soldier,” the voice says and Bucky sees someone emerge from the chaos, large, with dark paint across their forehead and a dark stripe running from dark lips to their chin. “He is moving through The Citadel.”

“Huh,” Nebula says. “Someone should stop him.”

“Yes,” the person, or creature—Proxima, says. “Have you seen him?”

“No,” Nebula says and Bucky sees her shift her guns in her hands. “I’ve been busy.”

Proxima’s eyes narrow.

“Doing what?” it asks.

“Oh you know,” Nebula remarks, rolling a shoulder. “This and that.”

“Does the Titan know?” Proxima asks and steps forward. Bucky can see it, the weapons in its hands. “The this and that?”

Nebula grins.

“Do you think,” she says and Bucky can see her foot brace against the door. “I tell my father anything?”

Proxima seems to cock its head.

"Did you tell him you have betrayed him?" it asks and Bucky sees the flash of something long and metal in its hand. "Or shall I?"

"My preference is neither," Nebula says and grits out a grin. "But let's see who wins."

Bucky hears a shout and a curse and then Nebula slams the door shut. The sound of weapons being discharged blast through the air and Bucky stumbles back with a curse, the echoes of gunshots and screams reverberating up the stairwell.  
  
  
It all swims together after that, Bucky’s reality and the surreal chaos exploding around him. The Citadel devolves into disarray with speed and it's all Bucky can do to reel in his anxiety, swallow his adrenaline, and keep pounding forward. He passes through the fifth floor with more ease than he's expecting, but as he turns the corner, he realizes it's because there's a man in an official HYDRA military uniform standing in front of the door.

Bucky comes skidding to the halt, cocking his gun, but before he can shoot, the man thrusts up his sleeve.

"Stop, you can trust me," he says. On his dark skin is a familiar tattoo.

"You're not a soldier," Bucky says, heart thudding wildly as he looks up at him. He's not in standard HYDRA regalia—there's no mask and the State insignia is attached on a lapel to what looks like a military jacket. Whoever this man is, he's a high State official.

The man shakes his head, drops his sleeve, and scans the spiraled hallway behind Bucky.

"No I'm not," he says. "You don't have much time, Barnes. Listen to me. The last two floors are crawling with State officials and their bodyguards. You don’t stand a chance. Get through the stairwell. When you get to the top, you’ll see a vent next to a window. Get in through there, it’s big enough. Keep going straight up, you’ll see the walkway. What you need’s at the top.”

“How will I know where to drop?” Bucky asks.

“You’ll know,” the man says.

“General!” a voice calls down the hall and the man curses.

“Fuck, thought I’d gotten rid of all of them,” he murmurs, smashing the buttons in the keypad behind him.

“General Rhodes!” the voice calls again and Bucky thinks, with a jolt, that he knows who this man is—General Rhodes, a high commander in HYDRA, former military and current statesman. Bucky had heard him talking about Rhodes before, or Rhodey, as he had called him—Tony Stark.

“Get in,” Rhodey hisses and nearly shoves Bucky into the staircase. “You don’t have long. They’ll move on him fast. You need to get your shit done before they do.”

“Move on him?” Bucky asks, eyes widening, blood thrumming. “Move on who?”

“The Titan,” Rhodey says. “They’re going to kill the fucking Titan. So do your shit fast and Barnes—”

Bucky looks at Rhodey questioningly and his heart rate amps up as he sees soldiers clomping down the hallway.

“Don’t get caught,” Rhodey says, glaring at him, and then shuts the door.  
  
  
_They’re going to kill the Titan_ , Bucky thinks, wobbling on his feet for a second.

He swallows thickly, his vision swimming before him. So far, his adrenaline has kept him alive, on his feet and unfeeling as he’s run and processed the fall around him. The exhaustion is slowly creeping over him, though, the weight of what this all means.

He touches his side and his fingers come away red. He’s been bleeding this entire time and hasn’t noticed until just now.

“No time,” Bucky mutters, gritting his teeth and nearly dragging himself up the stairs. “You can rest when you’re dead.”

He gets to the top and looks out the window for a moment and sees—everything. Soldiers outside, rows of them, armed to the teeth, fighting people he can’t recognize. They’re everywhere—the maskless Eyes, weapons raised, fury writ across features Bucky can barely pick out from his vantage point. They’ve prepared for this, to risk it all, for this end and all Bucky has to do is—

He looks up and sees the vent that Rhodey mentioned. Taking in a deep breath, biting back the aches in his muscles, the heaviness in his limbs, he punches through the vent, removes the grill, and jumps up, hanging from the opening. Then, with a grunt and a half-shout, Bucky uses the entirety of his strength to lift himself up through the rectangular opening. He gets himself in and, after a moment of adjusting to the dark, starts to crawl.  
  
  
From up here, in the vents, Bucky sees everything fall apart. Or, more correctly, he sees the Resistance rise up. He sucks in his breath, crawls up large rectangular passageways of steel, metal encasing him, do or die in the crawlspace of the Citadel. He catches scenes through the slats in the vents—officials screaming, officials fighting, officials finding a knife in their backs or a gun to their temples. Bucky passes a long, cavernous room and sees Soldiers wincing in pain, arrows piercing their shoulders.

“This doesn’t have to be death,” a man dressed in black, with an Eye embroidered into the black leather of his sleeveless top, says. He holds a bow and arrow, cocked at a Soldier, in his hands. He has blond hair.

“It was always ever death,” a HYDRA soldier hisses. He lunges at the Eye, who sighs and sidesteps him quickly. The soldier stumbles to the ground with a keening sound and finds an arrow to his back for his efforts.

“It doesn’t have to be,” the blond man says quietly.

Bucky thinks his eyes flicker to the vents, but Bucky crawls forward before he can notice him. His metal arm makes noise against the sides of the vent, it’s unavoidable. He’s both searingly hot and bone-deep cold. He’s exhausted. He thinks about Steve.

He doesn’t think about Steve.

It hurts to think about Steve.

Everything below him is noise and action, the sound of the apocalypse come early and furiously. Not everyone can be the heart of the end of the world, but everyone can play their part. It moves swiftly, like puzzle pieces clicking into place.

Bucky sees the large rectangle dropping down onto a wide, brightly lit space.

Heart pounding, head buzzing, he punches through the vent.

With a grunt, he drops out of the ceiling, onto the walkway of the seventh floor.  
  
  
It’s unlike anything that Tony or even Shuri described to him.

 _Take this disc_ , Shuri had told him, an age and a half ago. She had pressed a hand to his face, then held out a small disc to him. Bucky had looked at it in confusion, his body aching, his head throbbing with anger.

 _We need someone to take it to the Citadel_ , she had said and pressed the small silver circle to his palm. _Their entire infrastructure is held there. It is a computer beyond your wildest imagination._

 _What’s a computer?_ Bucky he asked.

 _It is what they have taken from us_ , Shuri had said.

 _It was information, at your fingertips. Control, power, communication_ , Tony had added later. _They took our voice and then they took everything else._

 _What do I do with it?_ Bucky had asked, heart drumming near his ears, vision swaying. He remembers sitting down. He remembers not comprehending this—what a vast, glorious, and terrible thing.

 _They have one_ , Shuri had said. _Put this in. It will destroy._

 _Destroy what?_ Bucky remembers asking.

 _Everything_ , Tony had said. Then he had shown Bucky, step by step, pillar by pillar, how the world would end.  
  
  
It stretches across the room, made up of metals and screens and wires. There are words on the screen, little beeping noises, a churning sound, and something like the smooth pull of wheels against tile. There’s a metal walk criss-crossing the room, walkways leading up to the monstrous computer system and walkways leading elsewhere.

Bucky looks at the computer, feels it tug him forward. There’s a panel, located centrally, next to the largest monitor, filled with colors, blinking lights, and little slots.

 _The red one_ , Shuri had said and strung the disc around Bucky’s neck. _It goes in the red one._

It’s brighter than the rest of the slots. Bucky sees the red one.

He feels giddy, electric under his skin. He hurts, everywhere. He wants this to end.

He takes a breath and then a step. He’s halfway across the metal structure when he realizes he’s suspended above air. He looks down only once to see a gaping black mouth open under his feet. It lurches in his chest, makes his stomach feel as though it could just fall away.

Then he realizes he hears noises behind him.

Bucky turns, and nearly doubles over.

The bullet goes through the top of his flesh shoulder and he lets out a scream of pain. He drops his gun without thinking, clutching at the blood streaming down his shoulder, the pain so searingly sharp he stumbles back from the force of it.

“Thought I’d forgotten you?” a voice says and Bucky’s eyes flutter open to see a familiar face—a perfectly asshole face, last seen half a dozen floors below. Rumlow sneers, gun raised.

“Natasha,” Bucky grits out, nearly blind with pain and Rumlow chuckles.

“She shouldn’t have asked for what she couldn’t handle,” Rumlow grins.

“Bastard,” Bucky says and tries not to slump against the side of the walkway. It’s a long way to fall. “What did you do?”

“She got what she deserved,” Rumlow says. His eyes flick over Bucky, catching on the bullet wound at his shoulder and the blood running down his sides, and his grin widens. “It’s over, Barnes. This is the end of the road.”

"Still got a stretch left to walk," Bucky grunts out. He tries to grit his teeth to keep his world from spinning. He can feel it coming, the black crawling toward the edge of his vision. It tugs at him, threatens to sink him under.

"It's over," Rumlow says. "You lost."

"Still breathin' ain't I?" Bucky asks and he sways on his feet. His hand is slick with blood. His head is pounding. He feels it again, that jarring, insistent pull.

Bucky takes a breath, tries to suck air into his lungs.

"Not for long," Rumlow says and raises his gun again.

Bucky stares down the barrel of a gun for the hundredth time that day. There’s no running from this, not here, in the middle of nowhere. He has nowhere left to go and a gun pointed straight at him.

He sways again, his exhaustion and his pain dulling the harsh inevitably of what he knows has to happen. He knows what this is; he can tell the end of the line when he sees it. He wishes it could be different.

Bucky wishes, at the end of the day, he could be a human. Not the thing that HYDRA had made him, not the Winter Soldier, but the son and brother he had been once, a person who had built the world with his hands, not one who had been created to tear it all apart. He wishes he could return to him—Bucky Barnes.

But all he has left, he realizes, too late, is the Winter Soldier. Maybe it had been the Winter Soldier all along.

It was like Steve had said—there's no humanity left, not at the end of the world. There's no space for it.

So maybe Bucky's been fooling himself this entire time. Because they had taken that from them, hadn't they? HYDRA had taken what had made him _Bucky_ and had recrafted him into a weapon instead. And if this is how he gets his penance, if what he has to do is break his soul to earn forgiveness for all of the sins he's committed and the people he's lost, then he supposes it's time he stops pretending he is anything else; or that he could be anything more.

"Do you know, Rumlow?" Bucky asks slowly. "Why HYDRA wanted the Winter Soldier back?"  
  
  
Rumlow raises an eyebrow.

"Because," Bucky says with a deep, deep sigh. He feels it, in the core of him, that last spark fading.

For every person there's a _before_ and an _after_.

For Bucky, there's a third point: _at the end_.

“They created him to be the perfect monster.”

He drops his weapon, braces his feet against the metal walkway, and when his arm starts whirring, fast, violently, louder and louder—Bucky lets himself go, finally. He snaps to black, just like that.

What comes for Rumlow isn't Bucky Barnes—what comes for him is the Winter Soldier. 

*

The apocalypse happens like this: with a one, a two, and a bang bang bang.

It's five bangs, actually.

One for every shot Rumlow takes.  
  
  
He doesn't remember anything but the black of his mind, the Winter Soldier where Bucky Barnes used to be.

What happens is this:

The Winter Soldier screams—not a normal scream, but the haunting, deadly scream of possession, of a man, or a creature, set on fire. He doesn't need a gun; he doesn't need a weapon at all. He throws himself at Rumlow, who tries to unload his gun on him. The Winter Soldier grabs the barrel, wrests it from Rumlow's hand, crunches it easily between his fingers, easy as tin foil.

Rumlow gasps a second before the Winter Soldier pulls his arm back and punches him.

The force he uses would have crushed Rumlow's head in if Rumlow hadn't slipped back at the last second. It connects with his nose at an angle anyway and Rumlow screams as his nose breaks, the crunching sound barely audible beyond the sound of chaos around them.  
  
  
It's like this:

The Winter Soldier sets upon Rumlow, metal fist around his throat, choking him with deliberation, his eyes black, his grip merciless, and when the sirens start blasting around him again, agitated and angry, he starts punching Rumlow, blow after crazed blow, just before Rumlow raises a knife and tries to dig it into his side.

The knife goes skittering across the walkway and falls into the abyss and the Soldier keeps screaming, his black eyes wide, his hair flying, punch after punch landing on Rumlow as Rumlow cries out, screaming and bloodied himself.  
  
  
In the background is this:

In a room, next to the computer mainframe, through an opening that the Winter Soldier could see from the walkway if he was not otherwise occupied, is a tall, large man. He has a crown on his head, literal and metaphorical, and skin the color of a mottled bruise. There is an energy around him, a miasma of undeniable negativity; bad intentions and violence. He's powerful, horrifying, evil incarnate. He has a dozen soldiers guarding him at any time, usually, but they're all dead on the ground around him.

What's left is him; just him, a blond man with a gun the size of a boulder, and a black man who looks like a king. They both look like they could be kings.

They both look like they could kill kings.

The Titan bares his teeth, thinking this: no one can kill me. I have ruled with an iron fist; I am unkillable.

He is not.  
  
  
The blond man gets an arm around the Titan's throat and pulls him back, the gun shoved up under the Titan’s jaw, and the black man who would be king, has glinting, vibranium claws where his hand should be. It's a glove. It's the strongest material on the planet, the sharpest points science has created.

The Titan gives a fight. He is large and strong and when he roars, it drowns out the sirens.

It is the end of him.

"You should not have left me alive," T'Challa says, bloodied and panting. "This is for everyone you have taken. You will never take _anyone_ again."

The Titan struggles to break free, but two kings are more than one.

"This is the end of you," the blond man says and his voice reverberates through the air, heavy with power. "This is the end of HYDRA."

The Titan opens his mouth and T'Challa digs his claws and twists. 

*

"Bucky," a voice gasps and the Winter Soldier is dragged up, pulled back, and turned, hands on his shoulders, palms on his face.

It sears into him, the heat of it, the callouses rough against the Soldier's skin, the warmth of another human, something he cannot possibly bear.

"Bucky," the voice says again and the Soldier tries to scream, but the man has his hands on his face, digs his fingers in, keeps them there. The Soldier's black eyes widen, blank, panicked, endless in his rage. "Come back to me. _Come back, Buck._ "  
  
  
He comes back to himself with a gasp and Steve continues touching him, rough fingers running over his face, his mouth, hands in his hair.

"Steve—" Bucky says and for a moment, Bucky can see it, the way the lines at the corners of Steve's eyes soften, the light that comes back into him. It’s relief. It’s something more.

"It's me," Steve says softly. "Buck, it's me."

It reverberates through Bucky, all of it, his consciousness slamming back into him, a cold gasp like the breath of life flooding his lungs. He vibrates out of his skin. He has blood on his hands. He clutches Steve and Steve kisses his temple, kisses his jaw, kisses his mouth.

"You left me," Bucky says, teeth chattering. "You _betrayed me_."

"I know. I'm sorry," Steve begs. "I'm so, so sorry."

"Steve—" Bucky tries again and he feels his body falling apart under the precariousness of the moment.

Everything around him, loud, bright, an unbearable, screeching crescendo of a moment.

"You’re so close, sweetheart," Steve says and kisses him again. "Go. This is your ending. Finish this."

Bucky stumbles back with a gasp.

"Steve," he tries again, but Steve pushes him.

" _Go_ ," Steve shouts and Bucky feels it shake through his core.

“Wait for me,” Bucky says, kisses him on his lips, and runs. 

*

What happens is this:

Bucky limps up the walkway, the metal wires under his boots, the black mouth of the open cavern underneath yawning up at him. He drags his body toward the computer, crosses feet over feet, head spinning, heart racing. His shoulder throbs. Every part of his body aches.

He smells smoke fill his nose.

No time. He’s run out of time.

Bucky stumbles to the computer, pulls his body against the console, looks at the screen.

He fumbles at his neck for the disc—finally.

The small, silver disc glints at the end of the chain, undamaged, created for this purpose alone.

He had brought it all this way, after all.

Bucky sharply tugs on the chain, rips it from his neck and stares at it for a moment in his palm, the silver catching in the light of the moment.

He looks up at the red slot.

"This is it," Bucky says.

" _Bucky!_ " Steve’s voice cuts, panicked, through the air and Bucky turns his head just in time to see the shot ring out, a bullet shatter the glass of the monitor. He gets sprayed with broken shards.

Rumlow, on his feet, blood on his face, hand clutched to his side, another gun in his hand.

He aims the gun again, right at Bucky.

*

It all happens at once:

The light goes out of the Titan's eyes, blood dribbling down the corner of his mouth. T’Challa twists his claws once more and retracts them back, just as forcefully.

There's one last gasp, one last scream, and then the Titan falls to the ground, the evil gone out at last.

*

Head fuzzy, adrenaline spiking, Bucky slots the small, silver disc into the red slot in the mainframe in the sky.

*

Steve shouts as Rumlow shoots—not once, not twice, but five times.

*

Bucky pushes the disc in and presses the red button.

*

Steve throws himself in front, disrupting the course of the bullets, using his body as a shield. Each shot hits him somewhere. He manages to get to Rumlow, twist his arm until Rumlow shouts. Steve grasps the gun and forces Rumlow to turn it back on himself.

Rumlow screams and Steve pulls the trigger.

In that one moment of agony, Rumlow’s eyes wide and shocked, Steve shoves him over the walkway into the void.

*

There's a loud, tonal screeching sound and Bucky steps back from the computer. There's black and white static across the shattered screen, something that starts rewriting the programming before his eyes.

It rumbles through the Citadel and suddenly, everything flickers. There’s another loud, mechanical screeching sound, and then everything goes out.

Just like that.  
  
  
The sirens stop mid-screech.

The lights turn dark.

Everything comes to a grinding stop. 

*

A moment of pure, unadulterated, shocked silence. Then everywhere around them, cheers go up, loud, _deafening._ Victorious.

*

Bucky turns from where he stands, in the middle of the walkway, in the middle of the sky, relief hitting him hard, a wave crashing into him as his brain short circuits. His task done. His mission, his whole purpose completed.

He lurches on his feet and tries to swallow the burning in his throat, the heat behind his eyes.  
  
  
Then Bucky turns and hears Steve gasp.

 

*

Downstairs, there's a blast, an explosion that rocks the foundation of the Citadel. He feels it under his feet. He feels it in the air around them, violent vibrations on their skin, everything rippling from shockwaves.

*

Bucky's eyes widen, his breath stuttering to a halt in his chest.

Steve clutches the blossoming red at his chest. His duster is shot to bloody hell.

He looks up at Bucky, catches his eyes.

He looks sad. Steve Rogers has always, ever, looked sad.

Then he closes his eyes and falls to his knees.

*

_no one's going to take me alive_  
_time has come to make things right_  
_you and I must fight for our rights_  
_you and I must fight to survive_  
[knights of cydonia; muse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHpTQB-bH9M)


	11. epilogue; a better after.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He can feel it on his skin, he thinks; gentle endings for violent things.

_you lost faith in the human spirit_  
_you walk around like a ghost_  
_your star-spangled heart_  
_took a train for the coast_

 

*

**epilogue; a better after.**

The world falls, but then it begins building itself back up.

That is the core of humanity, after all—sheer tenacity, and the power of unshakeable, unbreakable resiliency.

*

He opens his eyes to bright light streaming in through a window covered with a soft white curtain.

He watches it move gently, swaying in an early morning breeze. The movement is soft, a breath in and a breath out. It ripples across the cloth, starts at the top and fades by the time it reaches the bottom.

He can feel it on his skin, he thinks; gentle endings for violent things.

There’s a deep ache somewhere, but he tucks that away to remember another time, softens dry lips with the wet of his tongue instead.

He could close his eyes again and drift somewhere else, to shores that have been waiting for a very long time.

 _Welcome home_ , they would say and he would reply, _I don’t think I’ve earned it_.

When he turns his head, he sees him sitting on a chair, hair cut short, dark scruff still shadowing his face. His eyes are closed, a blanket pulled up to his chest, covering his knees. He’s asleep. Troubled, but asleep.

Maybe home has a different meaning, after the world’s ended.

His chest tightens.

“Bucky,” Steve says thickly. “You’re alive.”

*

He has more scars carved into his healing body these days. Five puckered, ugly circles raised hard on his skin. He presses a thumb against them sometimes, tries to remember what it felt like to run his hand over smooth skin once, long ago.

The memory of each bullet remains fresh, the look on Rumlow's face, furious and murderous, his eyes flickering past Steve to Bucky, Bucky swaying on a bridge of wires, trying to earn his penance and find his vengeance in the same self-sacrificial, stupid, breathtaking act.

He had barely registered it as a choice.

Steve had pulled himself over dead bodies to get to Bucky. The urgency had pooled at the base of his throat, the terror curdled in that place he had locked years ago, shut tightly, boarded over. Bucky had pried it open, nail by nail, laid Steve bare not for what he was, but what he had been, once upon a time.

He knows this now: that he had taken that pain, the unbearable loss of his entire world, and sharpened it to a point, used his grief to deflect what he knew, in his heart, to be true—that he had given up hope long ago and what he had replaced it with was an apathy that had been anathema to who he used to be. The world had taken everything from him and Steve had given up caring about it in return.

It was everything Peggy would have hated about him. It was everything that would have broken his mother's heart.

Steve had realized it all too late.  
  
  
He doesn't know when it changed.

Perhaps it had been on the river, the look in Bucky’s eyes as he shoved him, took his gun and shot. Or maybe on the back of a motorcycle, arms wrapped close around his waist, breath into the back of his neck, or in a truck with the rain pouring outside of the window. A hotel room so tense with anger, the walls could feel it. Maybe it was watching Bucky's eyes flash every time he spit fire, the way he held a gun, steady because he knew how to, but off-center because he didn't want to. It could have been the way his fingers drummed against everything they touched or the expression across his face when he saw soldiers train a gun on a mother and a child, his fierce, undeniable, loyalty; his passion; his fury. The way he carried his anger, deep, spilling over into the palms of his hands, or the way he would tip his head back, look up at the sky, and wish for a better world.

Steve hasn't believed in a better world for a long time, but something in the curve of Bucky's mouth, the light in his eyes, the white of his knuckles as he curled his fist, would make Steve wonder if that could be true—if _better_ could be something worth fighting for. Bucky loved with a ferocity Steve could feel, even sitting next to him, even not believing in a thing at all.

Or maybe it was watching Bucky break himself time and time again, for the people he knew, and more importantly, for the people he had never met. Steve had wanted, more than once, to reach out to him, to press his palm against Bucky's neck and make him slow down. _Be realistic_ , he would have said. _What's worth saving anyway?_

Maybe, one day, Steve had looked over at Bucky and seen someone he could have been, once. Or maybe he had looked over at Bucky and seen someone he never had been at all.

He doesn't know, really, and he would be hard pressed to tell now.

But believe in someone long enough and it becomes clearer—

You were wrong and they were right.

Steve had pressed his mouth to Bucky's, felt his scars beneath the rough skin of his palm, and when Bucky had opened for him, unlocked, like a click, under his touch, well Steve had known then.

Some things were worth making the world better for. And some people were worth believing in.

Bucky was both, to him.  
  
  
He had fucked it up, maybe beyond repair. But it was worth it to him to try, now.

Bucky was worth it, to him, to try.

*

"You were asleep for a month," Bucky tells him. He still can't meet his eyes, spends the time staring at his hands instead. He looks different now; both older and lighter. "We didn't know if you would—"

He can't seem to finish his sentence, so he drums his fingers on his lap, stares out the window instead.

Steve watches those fingers move, in a rhythm he realizes he has memorized.

"You stayed with me," he says. He's sitting up in his bed, a white, cotton shirt a size too big on him. He's lost weight, in the time he's been asleep. He's lost muscle too; he caught a reflection of himself in a glass and thought _gaunt_. "Why?"

Bucky lets out a huff of laugh at that. It's anything but genuine.

He does catch Steve's eyes this time.

"Where am I gonna go, Steve?" he says.

He leaves it unsaid: _who else am I gonna go to?_

*

“Steve,” Bucky startles awake from where he was sleeping, his mouth open, his eyes frantic, lines at the corner that crease, as though he can’t believe it, after all this time.

 

“I thought,” Steve says thickly, voice rasping with disuse. He tries to sit up and Bucky is by his side in a moment. He puts his hands at Steve’s shoulders, holds him in place. Steve looks up at him and feels the warmth hit his chest, his throat sticky, his vision swimming. “I saw him shoot. Bucky, I thought—”

“Steve, you— _dick_ ,” Bucky says and Steve is surprised to hear how thick his voice sounds too. He’s wound so tightly he’s shaking. “I told you to stop being an asshole.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve says automatically.

“You were dead,” Bucky says, his hands on Steve’s face, on his jaw, on his shoulders. “You were gone so long, I didn’t think—you—”

“I’m sorry, Buck,” Steve swallows. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

Bucky shakes his head, as though unable to speak, his body trembling.

He pushes his face into Steve’s neck, arms around Steve, and Steve uses what little strength he has to tuck him in there, his hand in Bucky’s hair.

*

He’s in Stark Tower—the doctor, a man by the name of Bruce Banner, tells him. He’s been here for a month, unconscious and healing. Tony Stark isn’t particularly happy about it, but he’s learned to shut up, apparently. He’s busy trying to help repair a country from the ground up, the doctor says. Anyway, it’s undeniable that Steve, for all of his faults, played his role too. No one comes away with five gunshot wounds and doesn’t earn some measure of empathy from the people who survived too.

“It was touch and go for a long time,” Dr. Banner tells him as he takes his pressure, checks his vitals. “You had a lot of internal bleeding, bullet shards we had to get out of you. You’re lucky it missed any major arteries, but the bleeding was bad and the shock to your system even worse. We didn’t know if you were going to make it out of the first week. But—”

“But?” Steve asks, watching Dr. Banner press rapidly on some kind of balloon attached to a cord and rectangular cloth that grows tighter around his arm and then releases with a hiss.

“You had someone make a compelling case for you,” Dr. Banner says with a smile. “Kept saying he didn’t save the world only for us to give up on you.”

Steve’s stomach tightens at that.

He looks at the empty chair next to his bed.

Steve had held Bucky until he had stopped shaking. Eventually, Bucky had peeled himself away and face wet, voice wrecked, he had said he’d go and get the doctor.

That had been four days ago.

Steve hasn’t seen him since.

“Give him time,” Dr. Banner says, as though reading his mind. “He’s reeling too.”

Steve shakes his head. He’ll give Bucky all the time in the world. It’s not as though he doesn’t deserve it.

It’s not as though Steve deserves a second chance from him.

“Is he okay?” Steve asks instead, quietly.

“He will be,” Dr. Banner says and undoes the Velcro from around Steve’s elbow. “He’s a tough cookie, Bucky Barnes.”

That’s an understatement, to say the least. Bucky’s the strongest person Steve’s ever met, but it seems like mincing words, to say that out loud.

*

"All good," Dr. Banner smiles at him and puts away his equipment. "We need to watch out for infections, but as long as you rest and don't try to take any more bullets, you should make a full recovery."

"Thanks, Dr. Banner," Steve says and the doctor, kind as he is, gives Steve an encouraging smile and presses a hand to his shoulder.

"Take it easy, Steve," Dr. Banner says. "I mean it. No strenuous activity. We don't want anything opening back up. One miracle is all we can ask for around here."

The order makes Steve itch, but he supposes it's easy enough to follow.

What's he going to do now that HYDRA's fallen and he's out of a job?

Steve watches Dr. Banner slip out of the room and sees someone hovering in the doorway. It only takes a moment to replace the small sliver of hope with a sharp stab of anxiety and, well, dislike.

"So," Tony Stark says, walking into the room. "You're alive."

Steve nods at him.

"I'm alive," he says. "Sorry to disappoint."

Tony looks at him, expression razor sharp. It's not fair to dislike the man for being right about him all along, but Steve can only bear one guilt at a time. It's easier to hate.

"I told him," Tony says, with no little distaste. He looks around Steve's room, a disgruntled look on his face. "I told him you were bad news. I got yelled at for it—by him and by Pepper. Hell, JARVIS tried to yell at me for pointing out what was obvious."

Steve takes in a breath and lets it out slowly, counting backwards in his head to push down his ire.

"I get it, Stark," he says, despite himself. "You didn't like me from the beginning—you didn't trust me and you were right not to. I don't know what you want from me. To gloat? So gloat."

"To gloat?" Tony tries to sneer and then abruptly changes tactics. He flips the chair Dr. Banner had been sitting on around and sits on it backwards. "You think that's what I'm here for? To gloat?"

Steve glares at him and then stares instead.

"If you want to murder me, you should have done it while I was still in a coma," he says.

Tony snorts.

"If I wanted to murder you, you would be dead," he says. Then Tony waves his hand through the air dismissively. "I told Barnes you were bad news, I gave him your file—if the idiot had read it—"

"He would have known you were right," Steve says through gritted teeth.

"—he would have died," Tony says, squinting at Steve. "Are you going to keep doing that? Let me finish. I'm a genius."

Steve stares at him, a little uncertain.

"I'm a man of science, Rogers," Tony says. "I don't like what you did, I hate that you did it, but the evidence speaks for itself."

"What evidence?" Steve asks dumbly.

"The operation was compromised from the beginning. We were stupid to think that HYDRA didn't have technology to detect aircraft gliding toward them," Tony says. He frowns, tapping his fingers against his mouth. "That wasn't you, you had no time. We made you invisible and tried to mask the craft’s heat signature, but it's imperfect technology. They had the upper hand. They were always going to give you and Barnes a nasty surprise."

That rankles something in Steve.

"Are you telling me you sent us in there knowing it was a trap?" he asks sharply.

"Do you know how to listen?" Tony replies, irritated. "No, I'm telling you it was a mistake. I should have foreseen it. We got too ahead of ourselves. Eyes on the prize, etcetera. The point is without you, Barnes would have walked into that trap with someone else. Someone who—"

Steve's chest tightens and he grasps at the blanket under his fingers.

"—wouldn't have taken that bullet for him," Tony finishes. "The evidence is that you're a dick and a turncoat, but that you care about him. You're the reason Barnes is still alive. You're the reason he was able to get the disc to the mainframe. So yeah, Rogers, I hate you and if you had died in your sleep I wouldn't have mourned the loss. I'm not going to thank you for your services to the country or whatever, but I'm not going to kill you either."

That's a lot for Steve to digest these days. He's used to his own company, the sluggish thoughts making their way back to his brain circuit. Sometimes a nurse or Dr. Banner. Having someone confront his own demons to his face is almost more than he has the capacity to bear.

But it's his burden to bear.

"Okay," Steve says and looks up at Tony. He can't blame the man this. "So why are you here, Stark?"

At this, Tony's confidence takes a dip that changes the atmosphere in the room. He shoves a hand into his salt and pepper hair, looks up at the ceiling. Then he looks back to Steve and clears his throat.

"I was wondering," he says quietly. "If you could tell me about the old Resistance."

Steve's not expecting that.

"What?" he asks, dumbly.

"The old Resistance," Tony repeats and leans his chair forward so he's looking more directly into Steve's eyes. "The SHIELD, right?"

Steve hasn't heard that word in a very, very long time. It runs down his spine, like a cold shock. He runs a hand through his own hair, longer and shaggier than before.

"What about them?" he asks, uncomfortably. He's been avoiding this for years.

His past, the old Resistance. His culpability in its demise.

"One of the founders," Tony says, fidgeting with a thread at the bottom of his jacket. "He died in that weapons factory. The last job you ever did."

Steve frowns, raking through the list of the dead from that awful night. Peggy Carter. Chester Phillips. Eli Bradley. How—

It hits Steve a second too late, a blinding blow to the chest.

"Howard Stark," Tony says, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. "Was my father."  
  
  
When the rot spreads, the only thing to do is cut off the limb, suck out the poison and spit it out.

Steve's been living in the rot for far too long.

So he does this—he takes the axe to the failing limb and he cuts it loose.  
  
  
He tells Tony about the Old Resistance, he tells him about the SHIELD. He takes a breath and tells him about Howard Stark.

At the end, Tony doesn't forgive him, but then, Tony says he doesn't have to.

"You look like someone who hates himself," Tony says, before leaving. "The world's ended and all that. If you didn't like who you were in the old one, maybe it's time to be someone new."

To which, Steve looks at the ceiling and wonders: if he's not going to be who he used to be, then who is he at all?

*

The first part of his recovery is actually healing. The second part is learning to walk again.

He's been in bed for long enough that his muscles don't work quite as smoothly as it used to. He has to learn how to use them all in conjunction again, how to move one foot in front of the other without falling to his knees.

He does it anyway, the first dozen times. He grips the walls as he tries to walk around the room and down the hallway. His legs feel like jelly, out of his control. He grits his teeth every time, watching his own two feet, but manages to stumble over them anyway, clutching at the wall, and sliding down. He feels his heart beat rapidly from the effort, sweat gather at his temple.

It's hard work, but he has nothing else to do.

He has no one else to come visit him.  
  
  
Twice a day, a nice blonde nurse by the name of Sharon Carter comes and helps get him out of bed, tries to help him down the hallway to test out his land legs. She's nice enough and good at her job, but Steve doesn't know what to say to her beyond _hello_ , _thank you_ , and _it's been an okay day_. It’s fine. She doesn’t ask about his past and he doesn’t ask about her present. They work together to make him mobile again, to re-form his muscles, and that’s enough for Steve. What else is he going to ask for?  
  
  
"Let's go up to the roof," Sharon says one day, with a kind smile. "Think we can manage that?"

Steve, unused to being so helpless, grits his teeth and nods. Any longer in his room and he'll lose control of his mind altogether.  
  
  
Sharon helps him down the hallway and into the elevator. Steve barely hears JARVIS chatter at him. He closes his eyes and tries to think away all of the places his body aches, the sharp, residual pain lingering in his limbs. The door opens and sunlight floods in, Steve blinking his eyes open at the bright light.

They help him hobble out of the elevator and Steve—takes in a small inhale. Where the quinjet had been parked is something else entirely. The roof is covered with a garden, white and red and pink flowers blooming, spread across nearly every surface. There's a small walkway around the roof, and benches at intervals.

Halfway across, sitting on one of the white benches, is someone.

"Need help?" Sharon asks with a slight smile.

Steve, his mind full of cotton, a rare stab of anxiety coursing through him, shakes his head.

"If you need me, just ask JARVIS," Sharon says quietly and goes back into the elevator.

It takes a minute, but Steve warms his limbs up enough to move. He takes a deep, shaky, desperate breath and walks down the path.  
  
  
The sky is the kind of clear blue that seems like the dream of a sunny day. He blinks against the light, the gentle breeze buffeting against him. It stirs the cotton shirt he's in, moves it against his skin. His hair slides over his face and he pushes it back.

When he takes a seat, he feels so awful his teeth are nearly chattering with it.

It takes him a long time to muster up some of the courage he used to feel so easily.

"I was wondering," he finally says, voice quiet. "What it would take to build paradise on a roof."

It's quiet for a moment and Steve swallows. But then, Bucky stirs, looks up ahead of them into the garden.

"A genius, I would guess," he says. "A lot of money. And too much time."

Steve nods and swallows again. He wasn't expecting this to feel so—not tense, but emotional. These days, he only let himself feel it at the intervals before drugs take him under. He lets himself feel it now, because with Bucky beside him, there's no denying it. It hits his sternum like the sharpest pain he's ever felt; the ache is deep, in his bones, nearly sparking in his blood. He misses Bucky so much it feels like a distinct part of himself; a phantom limb; something carved away.

"Do you like flowers?" Steve asks.

The breeze stirs Bucky's hair, so much shorter than it used to be.

"Who doesn't like flowers?" Bucky says in return.

"What's your favorite kind?" Steve says after a moment.

Bucky doesn't say anything, but leans forward and plucks a white flower off of its stem.

"Calla lilies," he says with a half-smile.

"Why Calla lilies?" Steve asks, watching Bucky twist the flower between his flesh fingers.

"They were my mother's favorite," Bucky says quietly.

They fall into silence again, the space between them thick with uncertainty, both small and gapingly large. Steve doesn't know how to mend this rift, what's broken between them. He doesn't know how to earn Bucky back; not when he had never earned him in the first place.

A bird flies over them with a cawing sound. In the distance, Steve hears, rather than sees, the rhythm of the city, the thrumming energy, dimmed once, coming back to life.

Maybe, Steve thinks, that's what he has to do, now. If Bucky will let him.

Maybe what they do isn't continue; maybe what they do is start over.

"Hi," Steve says, taking a breath and turning to Bucky. "I don't think we've met. My name is Steve Rogers."

Bucky looks ahead of them, stares at the pot of Calla lilies discerningly.

The moment feels tight, precarious, on the edge of a razor. It’s balanced on a tightrope with nowhere to fall, but down.

Steve thinks, maybe it’s unfixable. After all, how do you fix something like betrayal?

He looks down at his hands, gun calluses and the strong lines of his life.

Then, he hears it—Bucky letting out a breath, deep from his gut. He shakes his head and turns back to Steve.

"Hi," Bucky says and holds out a hand. "I'm Bucky Barnes. Nice to meet you."

*

When HYDRA falls, there’s nothing to rise in its place; not really. The Eyes make this clear—it’s not one serpent in exchange for another. They burn the Titan’s body; set gasoline on him and set him on fire.

It’s symbolism. It’s a new start.

“A government for the people, by the people,” Sam tells him.

“Didn’t work so well before,” Steve mutters. They sit together on the roof. Steve’s here more days than not, now.

He’s still in recovery, technically, but he’s antsy, going out of his goddamned mind with the need to move, to do _something_.

“Go look after the plants then,” Tony had snapped at him one day, watching Steve fidget in his convalescence room. “You’re driving me crazy. Go!”

So, surprisingly, that’s what Steve is learning to do. He takes care of the paradise on top of Stark Tower, fingers deep in fresh dirt, potting and repotting plants, checking leaves to make sure the color is right, watering, learning about pests and diseases plants can suffer from when no one’s paying attention.

It’s the opposite of his former life, in every conceivable way. Now he’s not up to his elbows in bullets, he has dirt stains streaking his white shirt and his forehead from where he accidentally swiped his hand.

Sam has a lot of work to do. He’s the former sheriff of a former lawless city and now he’s helping with the transition—sheriff of a rebuilding city and consult for the New Republic’s Council.

That’s what the advisors call themselves and they have only one job—to create something out of nothing, a democracy, or something more, something better.

Steve’s not ready for any of that yet, but then again, no one has asked him either.

He has soil caked under his nails.

“No,” Sam agrees. He looks at Steve with amusement, his best friend turned gun-for-hire turned traitor turned gardener. It’s a lot of lives for one man to have lived, which Sam tells him with frequency.

Sam is hard on him, still wary at times, but he forgives Steve all the same. He’s a good man and good men learn to forgive.

That’s what Steve is learning, at world’s end.

There are still good men left and forgiveness is a currency that’s not all spent.

“So what now?” Steve asks. He takes a break from repotting the fledgling lemon tree, sits hard on his ass with a slight thwump. Sam tosses him a water bottle, which Steve catches gratefully. He drains it in three gulps.

“We rebuild, Steve,” Sam says. “We give the people back information, technology, choices. We ask them what they want and we give them something to look forward to.”

“Seems a bit naïve,” Steve mutters and Sam snorts.

“Yeah, maybe,” Sam admits. “People are people at the end of the day. Still, nothing wrong with a bit of naïveté.”

It used to be a world where naïveté could cost you your life. Maybe there’s place for it in this new one, though. It’s a nice thought; innocence and hope to cut through the bitter calluses left behind by a war hard fought and losses hard felt.

“I’m tired, Sam,” Steve says and he feels it in his gut and the marrow of his bones. He’s lived more lives than most people and almost all of them have begun and ended in a fight. He doesn’t know how else to be, but he’s exhausted, spent to the sinews of his muscles. “I don’t know if I can do it anymore.”

Sam looks at him empathetically and reaches forward, hand cupping a beautiful red bloom.

“No one’s asking you to, Steve. I don’t mean that in a bad way. You’ve done your part,” he says and looks at Steve with a kind, compassionate expression that Steve’s not certain he’s earned. “You and Barnes both. Whatever rest you want, you’ve earned it. Be at peace, brother.”

 _Be at peace_ , Sam says.

It sits with Steve for a long time, those words. _Peace._ Was there a concept he had ever known less?

“By the way,” Sam says. “I found it. That thing you asked for.”

Steve looks up at him in surprise, his heart ticking up.

“In the middle of the apocalypse and you still got the damned _nerve_ to ask for something,” Sam chuckles. He takes a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket and passes it over to Steve. “It’s in there.”

“Sam,” Steve says, a little unsure of what to say. He had asked on a whim, hadn’t really thought Sam would be able to find it. He swallows thickly. “Thank you. I—owe you for this. For everything. I’m sorry.”

Sam waves that away and gets up with a stretch.

“You got your dumb ass shot five times for true love,” Sam says with a dark chuckle. “And I’m supposed to hold a grudge after that? Just keep yourself out of trouble for a single goddamned second, Rogers. Go on vacation or something.”

Steve laughs lightly and gets up. He’s sweaty and dirty, but he’s going to give Sam a hug he deserves.

“Take care, Sam,” Steve says, clasping Sam and clapping a hand on his back.

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam says. “Write me sometime, motherfucker.”

Steve watches Sam leave his rooftop and lets out a sigh buried deep within his chest.

He clutches the paper to him for a moment and then slips it into his pocket.

 _Be at peace_ , Sam had said.

He turns and goes back to his plants, thinking about what that might look like the entire time.

*

“You’re leaning too heavily on your left side,” Bucky mutters. He has an arm around Steve’s back, Steve’s arm around his shoulders.

They’re taking it slow, one step at a time.

Steve has good days and he has bad ones. Healing is a bitch of a process.

He lets out a frustrated breath, leaning more heavily on Bucky, until they manage to hobble to Bucky’s favorite white bench and sit down.

“You’re doing better,” Bucky says.

“It’s been weeks,” Steve exhales in frustration.

Turns out, one of the bullets had fractured his fibula. It had set his recovery back by a month and now every time he tries to walk, he’s sweating with the effort.

“Don’t try to play the fucking hero next time,” Bucky says, although it’s without shade and heat. His hand lingers on Steve’s thigh. The warmth seems to sink into Steve through the cloth of his jeans, making his stomach twist dully. Bucky moves his hand and Steve feels the loss acutely.

“There’s not going to be a next time,” Steve says as Bucky hands him a bottle of iced tea.

“No?” Bucky asks softly.

Steve takes it, his fingers brushing lightly against Bucky’s. His feels the thrill of it in his stomach.

“No,” he says. “It’s time for something else.”

Bucky watches Steve as he drinks the iced tea, pulls it away, and then screws the cap back on.

“Like what?” Bucky asks finally.

Steve looks at the clouds above them and closes his eyes.

“I don’t know,” he says.

*

Bucky comes to him more days than he doesn’t. It’s slow at first, once a week, then once every few days. He helps Steve walk farther distances, reads to him when he’s having bad days, and sits with him on the roof on good ones. He tells Steve what’s happening in the country—they’re drafting a Constitution, the Council’s reestablished foreign relations, they’re restoring airwaves and radiowaves, Shuri has helped improve and reopen the cross-continental railway—and what’s happening to him—he keeps being pulled in to consult on the Council, the Eyes have offered him a position, Natasha has told him he doesn’t have to accept.

“What do you want to do?” Steve asks him one day, watching the way the sunlight runs through Bucky’s hair, wavy at the top, curlier at the bottom.

Bucky sucks his lower lip in between his teeth and Steve watches that too.

“I don’t know,” Bucky echoes, with a sigh.

He has on a short-sleeved cotton shirt, blue to match his eyes. His metal arm gleams in the daylight, the plates still. This is something he can do now, even though he’s self conscious to do it.

Steve likes seeing him like this, like he’s trying to be someone different too. Someone not defined by his scars or the horrors of his past. Someone who’s just _someone_.

“Will you tell me?” Steve asks cautiously. “When you figure it out?”

Bucky says nothing for a full minute. He swings his legs under him, such a startlingly carefree gesture that Steve does a doubletake.

Then he stops, his fingers tightening over the bench.

“Okay,” Bucky says quietly. “I will.”

*

“You have dirt on your nose,” Bucky says.

It’s a warm, balmy day in the middle of March. Steve has been trying to understand why his tomato plants seem to be wilting on their steel wire. He has a pot upended beside him, gloves that he’s abandoned halfway through, a spade that’s crusted with dirt, and soil streaks across his shirt, his arms, and his forehead. He’s an absolute mess.

Bucky’s in a loose tank today, the cloth hanging off of him. When he moves, Steve can see stretches of skin underneath. He tries not to look.

“You’re a lot of commentary for someone who won’t help,” Steve remarks and wipes a hand across his forehead.

Bucky looks at him, slightly amused, slightly incredulous. Then, out of nowhere, hitting the back of Steve’s throat, unexpectedly, a smile.

“Okay,” Bucky says and gets his ass off his bench to come kneel next to Steve. “So teach me, if you’re so smart.”

He’s so close, Steve can feel the warmth rolling off his body. If he turned his head, just so, he could rest his chin on top of Bucky’s shoulder, press his chest to his back.

He swallows that want, and returns the smile.

“Let’s see if you’re as good at plants as you are at shooting,” he says.

“Couldn’t be worse than you,” Bucky says back, then pauses. “At shooting. You’re actually okay at the plant thing.”

Steve warms at that, looks at the garden around them.

“It feels...nice. To grow something,” he says quietly. “Instead of destroying it.”

When he turns back to Bucky, he’s watching Steve closely, with an indiscernible expression. The sun warms the tops of their shoulders, the breeze stirring their hair. He doesn’t know what to do about this moment, the growing warmth and uncertainty that exists between them. Bucky watches him like he could be something worth wanting or, at least, someone worth knowing.

Steve doesn’t know what to do with that either.

So he swallows past the unsettled, heavy feeling in his chest and turns back toward the plants.

“First, you have to feel the soil,” he says and reaches forward for a small pot.

He takes a scoop of fresh soil and holds it in his palm.

Bucky looks at it for a moment, looks at Steve for another, then leans forward, fingertips brushing Steve’s palm as he scrapes the soil onto his own.

Steve feels it, that light brush, spark up his spine, tingle down his arms, his fingers, his chest, everywhere.

They sit there, pressed close together, breathing raggedly, and learn to plant new life.

*

Bucky’s hair grows longer again. He doesn’t keep it for disguise purposes this time, just runs his fingers through it on warm days, shaking out the waves when they get sweaty and start sticking to his forehead.

They leave Stark Tower one day, Bucky insisting Steve see what Sam’s done with the place.

“He’s okay at his job,” Bucky says. He pulls on a jacket despite the warmth. He’s easier around Steve, when they’re on the rooftop garden together, but still gets skittish around other people.

“I’m sure he’ll appreciate that testimony,” Steve says. He puts on a jacket too, a brown, leather one that had appeared in his room with no explanation.

“I’ll deny it if he asks,” Bucky mutters.

Steve snorts, following Bucky onto the streets.

New Breukelen looks the same and different. It’s not a marked shift after the apocalypse; nothing is ever quite so dramatic. But it feels different at the core of it, the changes manifesting in subtle ways that would be easy to miss—the way they pass children cautiously wandering out on the streets, the shops that open their shutters early, the tentative smiles on faces, the sense of emerging life that wasn’t there before. It’s as though a cloud has been shifted, or lifted, the air itself less tense. He doesn’t smell death and he doesn’t sense it either.

They walk together, arms bumping, fingertips brushing, heads bent together, on occasion, talking quietly, watching life unfold around them.

They stop to watch two kids run around, one tugging on the other. What’s startling isn’t that they’re playing—it’s that they’re laughing. It’s that they’re _loud_.

“Well I’ll be damned,” Bucky mutters and Steve agrees.

It hasn’t been loud in a very long time.

Bucky watches the kids and Steve watches Bucky. They’re close to home and a long way from where they started. Steve’s committed his sins and Bucky’s committed his own. When he had found him, at that bar, a lifetime ago, he had seen only this: a reward, a mission to complete and move on. His life had narrowed to just that—a job, a mission, a skip of the conscience, and roads behind him as he tried to run from everything he had destroyed.

Steve will never be able to repent for everything he’s done, not in this lifetime and maybe not the next. But he can try.

Is that what peace is?

Maybe that’s what forgiveness is.

A smile creeps over Bucky’s face as the kids splash into a fountain, newly filled with water, and Steve thinks—a person can’t be his redemption, but a person can be the beginning of the road.

He loves Bucky; of this he is absolutely, fundamentally, achingly sure.

“Think we were ever like that?” Bucky asks, smile still in place, and turns to look at Steve. What he sees there must not be what he was expecting, because his smile slips a little, his expression surprised, and then softening.

Steve reaches forward, tucks a loose wave behind Bucky’s ear and then keeps his hand there. Bucky watches him like he always does, closely, every careful, but doesn’t move. He barely breathes.

Steve slips his hand into Bucky’s hair, his fingers cradling the back of his head, nails scraping lightly against his scalp.

Bucky takes in a deep, nervous breath, and closes his eyes.

They stand like that for a minute, then two.

Steve could close the distance, but doesn’t.

Instead, he slowly moves his hand away, the tips skimming Bucky’s shoulder, down his arm to his elbow. He can almost see the shudder move through him.

He swallows, feels shaken everywhere.

Steve tries to move away too, but Bucky doesn’t let him.

He catches his wrist before he goes, and Steve, heart drumming steadily against his ribs, lets him.

*

“Stole it from Tony,” Bucky says with a grin, holding up an entire bottle of whiskey.

Steve laughs.

“Let’s go up,” he says. “I’ll bring a blanket.”

 

They set up the blankets on the roof, the bottle of whiskey and two glasses in front of them. Above them, the night sky spreads out, dark and filled with stars.

“They couldn’t see them, before,” Bucky says as Steve pours them each half a glass.

“What?” Steve frowns.

“The stars,” Bucky says. “Too much light pollution. You know what that is?”

Steve shakes his head.

“‘swhen there’s so many lights out that it makes the sky lighter than it is. You couldn’t see the stars, even before HYDRA and all that,” Bucky says. He takes the glass from Steve with a thanks.

“Don’t think I want to imagine that,” Steve says. He sprawls out, legs in front of him, supporting himself on one hand next to him. “It’s my favorite part of crossing the desert. You look up and it’s a universe above you. Nothing humans can do to ruin that.”

“Don’t let them hear you,” Bucky says dryly. “Because they’ll try.”

That makes Steve snicker for some reason.

“Now you sound like me,” he says.

Bucky gives him a wry half-smile and takes a mouthful of whiskey.

“Guess I need to keep better company,” he says.

Steve smiles and takes a mouthful himself.

“Too late now,” he says. “We have a bottle of whiskey to finish.”

Bucky raises his glass in salute and Steve clinks his glass against it.

They swallow their whiskey, sit back, and watch the stars.  
  
  
They drink half the bottle, laugh quietly in the cool night air. Steve feels it wash across him, comfortable against his quickly warming skin. His limbs are loosening, his head a little fuzzy. The stars twinkle at them, the plants and flowers around them swaying in the breeze.

“Let’s dance,” Steve says, abruptly.

He’s never said such a thing before. He’s never had the opportunity to ask.

Next to him, laying down, Bucky looks up at him.

“There’s no music,” Bucky says.

Steve sucks in a breath.

“So?” he says. “I’ll hum.”

Bucky stares at him, wide-eyed and lazily for a moment. Then he grins and offers Steve his hand.  
  
  
Steve pulls him up and the two of them find a place amidst the teaming greenery, just the two of them in the middle of large, bright green leaves and flowers of all shapes and colors--reds and whites and pinks, blues and purples, and bright, sunny yellows. They glow, even under the pale light of the moon. The air smells like jasmine and Steve’s heart skips a beat.

Bucky leans in to him, one hand in Steve’s, the other at his back. Steve does the same for him.

He hesitates, only for the space of a breath, and then leans in, chin on Bucky’s shoulder.

Steve hums, some sweet and sad tune from his childhood, and they sway.  
  
  
They don’t move that much, but they move together, Steve’s hand on Bucky’s back, Bucky’s fingers digging lightly into Steve’s hip. The breeze stirs Bucky’s hair against Steve’s face, the waves tickling him. The body heat between them is almost overwhelming, their breaths slow and mingling. Steve can feel Bucky’s heart beating fast against him and if Steve can feel Bucky’s, then Bucky can surely feel Steve’s.

It’s fast, rapid, like a hummingbird. It’s slow too, luxurious, like a melody winding its way between them.  
  
  
They say nothing for the longest time.

Then, quietly easing it into the silence, Steve says, “I’m sorry, Bucky. I’m sorry for everything.”

He can feel Bucky tense against him, but Steve’s hand is firmly against him and they turn once. Steve doesn’t let him go.

Bucky, for his part, doesn’t seem to want him to.

He holds his breath for a dizzyingly long time.

Then, after a moment that never ends, Bucky says, “Okay. I believe you.”

It curls low into Steve’s gut, a sad, tentative thing. It has the power to absolve him of his sins. He doesn’t want that, though. He wants to earn his goodness.

After another minute, Bucky rests his chin on Steve’s shoulder.

“Can you hum for us again?” he asks quietly.

Steve closes his eyes. He can feel his heart beat between them, a new, soft thing.

He can hear the plates on Bucky’s arm shift, a familiar, comforting sound.

“Yeah,” Steve says and starts humming again.

They dance together, in the middle of paradise, under a dark blanket of stars.  
  
  
Bucky’s head ends up on Steve’s shoulder, tentative at first, and then lazily, almost sleepy. The bottle of whiskey sits in front of them, nearly empty now. Eventually, they had collapsed back onto the blanket and have been here for hours now, watching the sky above, talking softly, and breathing together, quietly, everything delicate. Steve feels loose, almost airy. His limbs are warm, his chest tight, his head a little lighter than it was before. He leans his head against Bucky’s, his palm pressed to Bucky’s lower back.

He can feel the heat ripple through the thin shirt. He can feel the heat in the gut of him.

Bucky turns his face slowly, noses into the skin at Steve’s neck.

Steve feels the breath come out of him, slow and ragged.

Bucky drags it against him, nosing at Steve’s skin, up the side of his throat, and then back to the short bristles at the back of his neck.

Steve’s heart speeds up. He closes his eyes, holds still, tries to ignore the shake in his limbs.

When Bucky presses a kiss, soft, like the touch of a butterfly wings, to the back of Steve’s jaw, he exhales, long and slow, more a hiss than a breath.

“Steve,” Bucky murmurs and his voice causes reverberations across his skin.

“Bucky,” Steve says, quietly, so quietly it’s barely audible.

“How long are you gonna make me wait?” Bucky asks.

That catches Steve off guard. He sucks in a breath and pulls away.

“I didn’t know—” he starts and then stops. Then, softer, “I was waiting for you to forgive me.”

Bucky’s expression doesn’t shutter, not really. They’re too close and warm and filled with whiskey for that.

“You saved my life, Steve,” Bucky says. “You took five bullets for me.”

Steve swallows, unsure what to say; what the right thing would be to say.

“I haven’t been angry at you for a long time,” Bucky says. He lifts his metal hand, presses it to Steve’s cheek. “You’ve been angry at yourself.”

It punches the breath out of him, the truth of it. This, laid bare before him—the truth of what Tony had said, the truth of what he feels. Things happen in war, in the apocalypse, and they’re not always good and they’re not always forgivable. But you put one foot in front of the other and you change and hopefully you come out on the other side better than you were before.

Steve had thought, this entire time, that Bucky would never forgive him.

Maybe he’s been afraid to admit that he’ll never forgive himself.

“I love you,” Bucky says. “Maybe I shouldn’t, not after what you did. But I do. I can’t reconcile the person you were for me the entire time, with the person Pierce told me you were. And I don’t want to reconcile it, Steve. I don’t fucking care. You think I care, after all we’ve been through? I want what I want and what I want is you. Don’t you think I’ve earned that?”

Steve sits with that, guilt and forgiveness and desire mixing in his stomach, a heady, painful cocktail of regret and hope. He leans his head back, looks up at the night sky above them.

The thing is—good or bad, end of the world or not, the stars are always the same. They live, they die, they shine whether or not you can see them.

Time is like that too; life is the same.

At the end of the day, all you can do is live with your past and do what you can to live a different in future.

“I’ll spend my entire life making it up to you,” Steve says, turning back to Bucky. “If you’ll let me.”

Bucky gives him a half-crooked smile.

“Don’t make me promises you can’t keep, Rogers,” he says.

“I promise,” Steve says. He slides a hand into Bucky’s hair, slides it down to press against the back of his neck. Bucky moves forward, knees on either side of Steve’s hips, straddling him, arms around Steve’s shoulders.

Steve closes the space between them, metaphorical and physical. When their mouths meet, he feels it flicker down his spine, the heat crawl up his abdomen and through his chest; the cracks in his veneer deepening, widening, shattering.

Bucky opens his mouth and presses into Steve and Steve holds him tightly, pulls him tighter against him.

They deepen the kiss, desperate at first, slow and fast, hungry and aching, months of something and nothing and _everything_ between them. Steve tastes whiskey on Bucky’s tongue, swallows the little gasps and sighs he make. He runs a hand under Bucky’s shirt, breaks the kiss only to lean back, help Bucky shrug out of it.

His scars look different under dappled moonlight. They tell stories, hard, dark stories, sure, but stories that are Bucky’s own. Stories he can change. Steve puts his mouth to Bucky’s neck and sucks. Bucky trembles under him, the shocks running down his spine. Steve moves down, fingers pressing to scars, his mouth tracing the curves and shapes of the raised skin. He takes his time, lingers in the moments, stretched out, from end to end.

Bucky lets out a breath and Steve feels his chest rise and fall under his mouth. He kisses his stomach.

Bucky pushes Steve back this time, fingers scrabbling to lift up his shirt too.

“I love you too,” Steve says and Bucky pauses, fingers in Steve’s hair.

He kisses Steve again in response, softly, gently.

Then, smiling, Bucky pushes him onto his back and crawls over him, seeking out his mouth in a kiss.  
  
  
_Be at peace_ , Steve remembers, and finds Bucky’s mouth in return. 

*

Steve reaches over to his jacket, rummages through the pockets for the slip of paper. Bucky is nestled next to him, the air cooling their overheated skins.

“I have something for you,” he says, and presses the slip of paper to Bucky’s chest.

Frowning, Bucky sits up, gives Steve a questioning look, and unfolds it.

“I decided,” Steve says. “I know what I want.”

Bucky looks at the paper and Steve can see the moment he realizes what it is; the moment the understanding breaks across his face.

“Steve,” he says, his voice strained, shock writ plain and simple. He looks up. “This isn’t—it can’t be—how?”

“Sam,” Steve says. “He found her.”

Bucky looks back at the slip, disbelieving. He looks like he’s going to cry.

“Bucky,” Steve says and crawls over to him. He braces a hand to Bucky’s shoulder and makes him look up. “I’m done here. I don’t want to be a part of this. This is for—what comes after. The people who decide what comes after, the people who have the energy and heart for it. I don’t. I’m tired. I want to go somewhere else. I want to be someone else.”

Bucky doesn’t seem like he understands. He keeps looking at the sheet of paper.

“There’s a train heading West,” Steve says, quietly. “We could find her, if you want.”

Bucky’s shaking, he’s so overwhelmed. Steve cards his hand through Bucky’s hair, lets it linger at the bottom.

“Come West with me, Buck,” Steve says. “Let’s go back to the desert. Let’s go find your sister.”

If lifetimes could break upon a single moment, then this would be the moment for Steve. He’s had a lifetime of pain and another lifetime of regret. What he wants now is what Sam told him he could have, if he wanted—a lifetime of peace.

They could leave together, set down their weapons, get on a train that takes them back across the wheat fields, the corn fields, the fields of soy, the rivers, the mountains.

This, at the end, is what Steve wants: the chance to be able to explore the world, this new world, on his own terms, at his own pace, with the person he loves by his side.

He only realizes Bucky’s stopped shaking when he feels a hot mouth pressed feverishly against his.

“Take me, Steve,” Bucky says into his mouth. There’s no hesitation here—not on face, not on in his voice. “Take me back West.”

*

_when they break your heart_  
_when they cause your soul to mourn_  
_remember what I said_  
_boy you was battle born_  
[battle born; the killers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb7bWBkL31M)

 

*

They board the train together, with nothing but packs on their back, Bucky in a leather jacket, Steve in a new duster. They linger on the steps, look out at their home, old and new, left behind.

“We’ll come back one day,” Bucky says.

“I know we will,” Steve says, presses a kiss to Bucky’s shoulder. “You can’t leave your home behind, not forever.”

They hear the train blow its whistle, feel the rumble under their feet as the locomotive starts, the first of its kind in longer than anyone can remember.

It starts to pull away so they go inside, find an empty car for themselves, and sit, pressed together, shoulder-to-shoulder, thigh-to-thigh, fingers interlaced, Bucky’s head nestled onto Steve’s shoulder. They watch quietly as their old world slides away.

What they go off into isn’t the same world; it might not really be new and it might not really be the best, but it will be different.

It will be better.

They will make it better.  
  
  
And, after the world ends, isn’t that all anyone can ever really hope for?

*

_i know a place we can run_  
_where everyone gonna lay down their weapon_  
_lay down their weapon_  
_don't you be afraid of love and affection_  
_just lay down your weapon_  
_(lay down your weapon)_  
[i know a place; MUNA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t5gGm3NWU4)

*

  
  
_playlist: worn out places, worn out faces; playlist by crinklefries, cover art by witchylurker  
_  
**[worn out places, worn out faces; a (spotify) playlist by crinklefries](https://open.spotify.com/user/snoozology/playlist/1ThYSl88hZHWX1vSvQl5aZ?si=cBR8ecr4S7u7wNo8lht0OQ)**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know those projects you moan and groan about for months and then, upon finishing, you're left immediately feeling you miss it in all of the weirdest places? Is it weird to say this fic is like that for me? Know that I griped about it and bitched about it, but that I put my everything into it.
> 
> Thank you to my INCREDIBLE artists and thank you to my AMAZING beta and thank you to the mods of the Bang. And, of course, thank you to everyone who has read and comment and come along for this WILD ride with me. I appreciate each and every one of you. ♥
> 
> \+ If you are so inclined, this fic can be reblogged [here](https://spacerenegades.tumblr.com/post/183080858018/worn-out-places-worn-out-faces-acollaboration) on Tumblr, or RTed [here](https://twitter.com/spacerenegades/status/1097537188185718784) on Twitter!

**Author's Note:**

> \+ Each chapter corresponds to a different song. You can click on them at the end of the chapter! 
> 
> \+ Check out witchylurker's [playlist](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17838551/chapters/42224264) at the end of Chapter 6. 
> 
> \+ I can be found in all of my MCU ramblings at [spacerenegades](https://twitter.com/spacerenegades) on Twitter! Come shriek with me!


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